Hence why I picked an Artifact + Graveyard theme. I knew I'd be the only one to do it, so I didn't have to compete directly with all the Morph, Enchantment, and Exile themes. Additionally, the Instant-Sorcery themes, Token themes, "This color takes over" themes, mono-color, basic and what not are all expected themes.
Basically, if people on the forum have talked about it, if its an obvious issue, if its low-hanging fruit... Why go for it? You have to compete with everyone else. And maybe part of the reason why design hasn't gone into them yet is because they are dangerous.
Just my perspective. My entry certainly did not hit any balls out of the park though, so its not like my decision is relevant enough that it could be even conceived as advice or I told you so's.
EDIT: @zubr: I should say your brief sentences actually helped me parse the details a bit. Thank you a lot!
As I kinda sketch more out, I'm realizing that my block really wants a GY subtheme supporting the enchantment theme, given the history of the plane I've sketched out.
Hence why I picked an Artifact + Graveyard theme. I knew I'd be the only one to do it, so I didn't have to compete directly with all the Morph, Enchantment, and Exile themes. Additionally, the Instant-Sorcery themes, Token themes, "This color takes over" themes, mono-color, basic and what not are all expected themes.
Basically, if people on the forum have talked about it, if its an obvious issue, if its low-hanging fruit... Why go for it? You have to compete with everyone else. And maybe part of the reason why design hasn't gone into them yet is because they are dangerous.
Just my perspective. My entry certainly did not hit any balls out of the park though, so its not like my decision is relevant enough that it could be even conceived as advice or I told you so's.
Your submission isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be, you know. You're your own harshest critic, but you're really hard on yourself. Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised to see you Top 8.
All that aside, could you do a "card by card" analysis for my cards? It would be nice to have a good designers thoughts on my cards. I want to perfect my craft as much as possible for next time.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
T2:
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
This is great news. First the McRib now Time Spiral!
Ask and ye shall receive. Let me preface by saying that it was a hard challenge, and I tend to focus on the negative (so that you can make the negative better). Both submissions were nowhere near the worst of the pack, but they both had flaws.
ManinBox
Mirguu: One of the better planeswalker designs I've seen in a while. Good job.
Dragon: The Aspect mechanic seems like a lot of wierdness for something that could easily be written "control 3+ tapped mountains".
Bolster: I'm always nervous about text-box copying. That's probably just me, it's a fine common (a lot like forecast).
Equipment: +8/+8 if I'm playing monocolored. That's kinda broken. Good idea though, just needs to be more expensive/smaller boost.
Ursuar: This is a legendary rare? Merfolk Seastalkers has a similar ability without the ancient-clause and Sun Titan has a better body.
Original Sin: Original (get it). But the flavor connection is loose and it doesn't tie into your plane's theme much. A well-designed card, but it doesn't flow with the rest of the set.
Mastery of Time: Sheer. Undiluted. Awesome. You knocked this one out of the park.
Ur: I have no clue whether the rules allow this or not. If they do, it's a fantastic card. If they don't, not so much. Still, points for sheer WTF factor.
Precursor: Vengevine is nearly impossible to get rid of, and you want to make a Vengevine mechanic? Three of these things (or really any three red precursor cards) forms an infinite loop. Punishing Fire is good enough to be played in extended with Grove. You've just gotten rid of the grove part and brought that madness to standard.
Gurella Encampent: Solid design, plays well with set themes, nothing bad to say.
Best card: Mastery of Time.
Worst card: Urusar.
Overall: There are some solid designs here, but your keywords aren't particularly good. Aspect is really complicated for what it effectively is, and precursor is very close to being broken. It's not enough to be innovative: you need to be innovative without being complicated.
@Kultcher
Dweller: Well, that's certainly new. To be honest, I have a hard time evaluating this card. I don't like the fact that I lose life whenever I want to do something cool, but I do like the idea of a dormant planeswalker with no +'s or -'s. Points for innovation if nothing else.
Ascension: Awesome design. I would say it would be better if you could trigger off a card on the field, but this is a good card.
Warmarket: Another cool card. The wording's off (you don't need the weird flash clause), but the design is solid. Timmy will love it.
Death Sentence: Is this really worth a keyword? It's a fine card, but there's only so much new ground to be had with alternate costs. Just as long as you don't start pitching cards from your hand.
Vailia: This thing needs a Iona-like cost. It shuts down entire decks and is pretty much impervious to removal. The first ability is great, the second ability is un-fun.
Ivysnap: Sure, I guess. Quillspike is much better at what this card is trying to do though, and I'll take Greenweaver to make my mana any day.
Sentry: Uh, subtype? Other than that, it seems more of a johnny card than a spike card. I guess it depends on how competitive counter-decks are.
Mimograph: Wait. When did the multicolored theme come in? Multicolored is only let in when its a set theme (planeswalkers are the exception, there's not from the set so they can do whatever they want). Notice the lack of multicolor in TS, ZEN, or SOM. This is a problem.
Improvised arsonal: Bad choice of counter names, fine ability. Needs to say target Recruit creature gets +1/+1. We're starting to get keyword-fevor here. Hope this is the last one.
Land: This is common? Turntimber Grove is a common land. This thing has so many moving parts that it's pretty much gotta be a rare. Let's see, you can sac it to make an insect, it's got a new keyword, and its 8 lines of text. That's a rare, which is not what the challenge asked for.
Best card: Ascenson.
Worst card: The land.
Overall: 5 keywords. Five. Alternate costs don't need to be keywords (they've never been before) and they're not particularly new or exciting. Salvage looks like a dredge-like disaster waiting to happen for any value bigger than 1 mana. Rarities are off. At the end of the day, I'm still not sure what your set's about. And that's not good.
First thoughts: Okay I've read this submission before. Wary about themes, but looking into execution.
1) I'm actually of the mindset that planeswalkers should be about expressing an idea. And I feel like yours is pretty good, no major warnings. Abilities synergize. Loyalty a little low starting for its CMC though, but that is a development issue.
2) Aspect is worded weird "As long as" doesn't feel right. I'll be honest, I'm not for counting mana in mana pools. But Flamebreak is a pretty cool bit, but the guy might be too efficient. As long as he makes it to your end step the turn you cast him, you'll get it off. Also you can do it on your opponent's turn, even without a card in hand.
3) Cool trick. Might be too expensive for the trick, but the overall cost seems fine.
4) Oh wow. A permanent effect. It is neat at the very least. Artifacts with mana of one color seem to play better, in my mind.
5) Powerful recurring effect, based on having ancients. No others have been previewed yet. I'm not feeling the flavor ooze, but its not a complete miss
6) Okay, Original Sin is AWESOME. The name, the flavor, the ability. I like it. A lot. But suddenly now I'm looking for another card type? Didn't know it was relevant.
7) I'm not actually sure if the card fits the column. That is a crap ton of blue mana. The effect is pretty cool though.
8) No. It is too blatantly breaking a rule poorly. And it doesn't even feel Johnny except that it breaks a rule.
9) A loop to throw at me; I thought I was done looking at new mechanics. Not a big deal though. Precursor seems reasonable.
10) The land is not doing it for me. Way too many drawbacks (no color in a color loving set? ETBT?) With an ability that I have a hard time evaluating because I haven't been given context to evaluate it. The only bolster you've shown is 2W, which I'd rather pay than lose a land drop
Overall: Cohesion. You've shown me some mechanics that care about color, which can be cool. You've shown me one bolster, some bolster support, a card that cares about Instants/Sorcerys, and a Precursor. I would have liked another Bolster and another Precursor. I'm not crazy about the theme and the concept doesn't feel in line with the current explanation of the Multiverse, but that's not a big deal. Some cool cards, a nice mix of things. Seems fair enough to me. I don't give scores, but I didn't recoil (except at my mana being creatures).
More random observations from going through about 3/4 of the submissions on the wiki:
I've seen a few cards submitted twice, and it's weird when one person is the original designer and the other is just borrowing it. An example: that demon that puts all the cards in your hand onto the battlefield facedown. Are they going to respect the guy who borrows it? The same guy who borrowed the demon borrowed a different card from another contestant. I would've been wary of doing this, but I don't know if the judges will care. The whole furniture maker/interior designer thing.
I don't think I like planeswalkers with static abilities. It takes away from the uniqueness of the card type.
Bad keyword: Ethereal (This card is an enchantment in addition to its normal card type.) On a creature. :[
Favorite line I've seen, maybe, which might not be from a real submission (it's an emblem given by a planeswalker's ultimate): "Whenever a creature with deathtouch you control deals damage to an opponent, he or she loses the game." That's hilarious.
I'm amused by efforts to fix phasing. Is this a mechanic people have been clamoring to bring back? I guess so! It's coupled with counting exiled cards, which just sounds like a pain.
Ugh, artifact enchantment. No thanks.
Jeez, leveling, flip cards, and attaching facedown cards to creatures as auras with no text? These abilities all do basically the same thing; one set doesn't need all three.
I think pairing haste with abilities that actively go against it (costs less per damage dealt, for instance) is a tension that should be used sparingly, if at all.
Please don't make me shuffle every turn.
Favorites so far: Amenta (cohesive without being completely monotonous, mostly clean cards), Korovi (flavorful concepts for abstract effects), Aurora (clever way to put life gain in every color, but might be too one-note), Anonia (solid, doesn't feel over-designed), Wodotha (I think I'm less excited about this one than I used to be; it has good designs, but the flavor connection may not be quite as strong as I originally thought), Kharuk (objectively the best, as all right-thinking people know; creator is a genius sex-machine).
Thanks for taking a crack, person3412. Just wanted to add a few notes:
RE: Death Sentence. You may be right. I kept it as a keyword because I wanted to keep space open for cards that said, "whenever you play a card for it's leverage cost, ~effect~." Thought I could probably just have cards that say, "Whenever you play a card for less than it's mana cost" and that would be more far-reaching.
RE: Ivysnap: This was more meant to be indicative of a greater subtheme of green and sometimes black "using" -1/-1 counters to benefits a la Quillspike.
RE: Sentry: Was put in the Spike spot because he hurts Planeswalkers (though perhaps not enough?).
RE: Mimeophage: Hm, I might've flubbed here. Personally, I miss the days when multicolor cards were more "organic" and just appeared where it made sense for them to appear, instead of being a set-defining theme. Consider this my petition to go back to the old ways.
RE: The land and salvage in general: Yeah, I deeply regret that. First of all, Salvage is much more interesting on spells, it's hard to design lands around it. My original incarnation was a bit smoother but I ended up changing it last minute. It turned into a better mechanic but it made working it with lands almost impossible. What I should have done was make it come into play as normal, produce 1 colorless when tapped, and salvage for a green. As it is, I don't think it's rare but you're right that it's not common either.
RE: Keywords: I don't really count ability words as keywords. I kept them because I thought they provided a nice theme/flavor link. Was probably a misstep; I should've at least dropped Command as an ability word. That said I don't think 5 is totally wild-crazy out of line. Ravnica had 5 (counting hybrid).
I think your background is the best of the prison worlds I've read. Sounds pretty cool. I wasn't sold on the command business at first, but it's grown on me.
Side note: I also considered doing some CMC matters stuff in my set, and metaghost/pachuco cadaver (or however it's spelled) pointed out that the traditional CMC cut-off between big and little was 3-4 as in Smother, Austere Command, Consume the Meek, etc. I guess there's no need to keep this, but shifting it up one seems a little inelegant to me.
Individual cards:
Dweller Dormant: I don't think I like a planeswalker designed with no way to change its own loyalty. Yes, it's within the rules, and it can still get destroyed by damage, but it seems like a pointless twist on the card type. The abilities are fine and obviously synergistic (maybe a little too obviously).
Tyrant's Ascension: Interesting. I'm a little worried that command will be too easy to trigger, but I could be wrong; it seems a little strong for its cost. Asymmetrical board sweepers are always exciting, though.
Warmarket Bazaar: Seems fine. A small group of players will like it, no one else will care. Pretty good design for the column.
Death Sentence: Leverage feels pretty artificial, but it interacts well with the CMC theme, so it's okay. Otherwise a pretty ordinary kill spell.
Vailia: I personally don't like cards that shut down huge chunks of opponent's hands, but R&D seems okay it, and at least it'll be over soon.
Teeming Ivy Snap: This card doesn't much excite me. It's okay.
Nullifier Sentry: Why not just make this work on any permanent? Also, I suggest "Counters can't be put on permanents," since I don't think this does what you want it to do. I assume it's meant to stop planeswalkers, since it's your Top Decks card, but I don't think paying costs is an effect. I could be wrong on this, though. I don't really know the rules.
Assuming it works on planeswalkers, I like the flavor connection.
Mutating Mimeophage: This card seems like too much effort for too little reward to me. Feels like it's trying to do too much. I am not a fan.
Improvised Arsenal: Calling these equipment counters seems pointlessly confusing. This card also has a huge potential to muck up the board, since it makes chump blockers for 1W. I think the same idea could be conveyed in a much cleaner way. Not a very good design in my opinion.
Felled Thicket: Pretty interesting, but with salvage, it feels like it has the possibility to be a little too strong. It's two mana and a guy one turn, which is pretty good.
Overall, there's nothing that rules your submission out of the top 8, and it's probably above average for what I've seen, but it doesn't blow me away. Who knows what the judges are looking for, though.
EDIT AFTER READING SOME POSTS: I think the CMC matters theme comes through strongly enough, and personally I don't like the submissions where all the cards have the word 'enchantment' on them. I think one-off multicolor is probably okay. Look at Wrexial, the Rising Deep, for example. You probably don't want them below rare, though, or maybe an uncommon cycle, unless it's a major theme. Then again, if you have common gold cards, guess what? It's a major theme.
I think it's interested to look at the distinction between "trawled for" other-people's-cards, that were found by randomly scouting the wiki, and "make-me-a" other-people's-cards, which were found by asking visitors to fill holes. I think that in some sense, they represent very different things, and it's a bit unusual that some people are walking in with four of one, while some others are walking in with four of the other. On one hand, a designed-for-the-set card is going to feel much more seamlessly integrated most of the time, but if you say, "Hey folks, my cool block 'Invasion' needs a red common instant that's good in limited and which showcases the 'Domain' mechanic", someone's going to give you Tribal Flames; that's not really exactly showing off the ability to pull together interesting designs from other people. I wonder what sort of relative impression trawlers are going to make compared to herders; is a trawler's submission going to look haphazard for having three or four cards that are sort of off the path? Is a herder's submission going to look too laser-focused?
Hm, good catch on the Sentry. Hopefully WotC also makes the flavor connection of what the card is trying to do. As for the noncreature clause... I'm honestly not sure. It was someone else's submission and I just didn't think to change it.
Is there a standard counter type for putting counters on Enchantments? Or is that something that really just isn't done?
@Joyd: I got 3 from my page, and one from trawling (YOURS!). I intended on getting more from elsewhere and I didn't actually guide the process too much on my page.
BUT I think you are bringing up another interesting point (you seem to do that a lot). I just sat here for a few moments trying to say something more useful, but all I got is: If you do both well, it should be harder to tell which you did. I feel though, if you dug up for four submissions from other people's pages, you are bound to way too many constraints on showing off your own mechanics within the remaining cards.
There's not a standard kind of counter to put on enchantments, but it's done with some frequency. In extended, there's quest (obviously), hoofprint, and tower; quest was a theme of the block with good flavor giong for it, but the others are one-offs. So, you can do it, but do it sparingly, I would say.
Something else I think was noticeably underdone was limited smoothing mechanics. While Cantrips is the most common "mechanic" used for this and it's not really necessary to note that your block uses cantrips, most blocks do possess mechanics that help smooth limited, and in particular help avoid mana screw and/or color screw.
Scars has a heavy artifact theme, which helps dodge color screw, and cantrips. (Including, arguably, the Spellbombs.)
M11 has Scry.
Rise has levelers, which allow you to compete even if you can only make two or three mana at a time. It also has cantrips.
Zendikar has kicker, which appears on cards that can be played for a smaller cost than their "biggest bang" if you're mana screwed, and a limited environment where many of the best creatures are the cheapest ones, so curves are generally very low compared to many other blocks.
Shards has Cycling.
Shadowmoor has hybrid mana, which helps avoid color screw.
Lorwyn has Clash.
And so on. Note that these mechanics don't necessarily have to appear on tons and tons of cards, but every block makes some concessions to helping players avoid mana/color screw. I think these mechanics are generally seen as unglamorous, and are typically unappreciated by players who don't play a lot of limited, but they're very important. Granted, it can be assumed that you're using cantrips for smoothing, but I think that including a limited smoothing mechanic demonstrates a knowledge of what sort of things a set needs at a fundamental level regardless of theme. (Limited smoothing mechanics can have appeal to non-limited players as well, as Clash has a little of and Morph and Hybrid mana have tons of.) Mechanics like Retrace help deal with mana flood, although not every block has something out there specifically for that. Still, it's good to recognize what your mechanics are actually doing for the play experience besides simply being novel ways of moving cards around.
Well, I've read about a trillion of these entries (51, not counting mine), and I sure hope Mark Rosewater is better at keeping them straight than I am, because they really all start to blur together after a while. So, so many enchantment themes. So many.
After a while, I only needed to see one card I disliked to discount the whole thing. I wonder how much of this will happen with the judges; it's probably easiest to just eliminate the people who make rookie mistakes on the first pass, then look at what's going on with the rest of the field. One aggressively unfun card might doom you.
I saw some interesting drawbacks, but I don't think they were a good idea. Cards you give to your opponents, or that you give copies of to your opponents, or that you can lose control of if your opponents do the right things, these are not very appealing designs most of the time. Some submissions had more than one of these, which seems a terrible choice to me (I say this as someone who initially planned to have a mechanic like this in my block; you can check out the deprecated monuments in the mechanics section of my wiki).
It's true, there weren't many limited smoothing mechanics, but I think that's kind of the nature of the business. When you're pulling together preview cards, cycling and cantrips are not going to be on your mind, especially when cantrips feel like lazy ways to boost card power. I'm not surprised you didn't see things like this; they only make sense en masse.
On the plus (?) side: I didn't see any submissions that I thought were absolute locks. This is good if, like me, you estimate that you're near the middle of the pack; since the variance isn't large you might still have a chance. Depressing thought: 19 people have already been eliminated. There's roughly a 1/5 chance that you're out!
I suspect that the people not on the wiki are going to have worse submissions, on average, than the people with pages. I think there are twelve or thirteen of these contestants. I found there was a strong correlation between size of wiki site and strength of submission, which makes sense: better collaboration produced better submissions. A lot of people who didn't post their entries had pretty bare-bones pages, so I'm hoping they don't much factor into the final 8.
Anyway, here's an interesting submission not on the wiki. It has one of the most inventive themes I've seen (subtypes matter) and is some kind of ultra-tribal block. I found it intriguing, but many of the cards felt a little over-designed to me.
I also liked Rhyfel, which has some very functional keywords and a strongly expressed combat theme.
Anyway, now that I have conquered the wiki I must sleep. Good luck all.
I don't think "ninja'ing" designs is going to be penalized at this stage, simply because people didn't have time to set up the networking and compete with 100 other designers for the attention of the crowd.
First thoughts: Okay I've read this submission before. Wary about themes, but looking into execution.
1) I'm actually of the mindset that planeswalkers should be about expressing an idea. And I feel like yours is pretty good, no major warnings. Abilities synergize. Loyalty a little low starting for its CMC though, but that is a development issue.
2) Aspect is worded weird "As long as" doesn't feel right. I'll be honest, I'm not for counting mana in mana pools. But Flamebreak is a pretty cool bit, but the guy might be too efficient. As long as he makes it to your end step the turn you cast him, you'll get it off. Also you can do it on your opponent's turn, even without a card in hand.
3) Cool trick. Might be too expensive for the trick, but the overall cost seems fine.
4) Oh wow. A permanent effect. It is neat at the very least. Artifacts with mana of one color seem to play better, in my mind.
5) Powerful recurring effect, based on having ancients. No others have been previewed yet. I'm not feeling the flavor ooze, but its not a complete miss
6) Okay, Original Sin is AWESOME. The name, the flavor, the ability. I like it. A lot. But suddenly now I'm looking for another card type? Didn't know it was relevant.
7) I'm not actually sure if the card fits the column. That is a crap ton of blue mana. The effect is pretty cool though.
8) No. It is too blatantly breaking a rule poorly. And it doesn't even feel Johnny except that it breaks a rule.
9) A loop to throw at me; I thought I was done looking at new mechanics. Not a big deal though. Precursor seems reasonable.
10) The land is not doing it for me. Way too many drawbacks (no color in a color loving set? ETBT?) With an ability that I have a hard time evaluating because I haven't been given context to evaluate it. The only bolster you've shown is 2W, which I'd rather pay than lose a land drop
Overall: Cohesion. You've shown me some mechanics that care about color, which can be cool. You've shown me one bolster, some bolster support, a card that cares about Instants/Sorcerys, and a Precursor. I would have liked another Bolster and another Precursor. I'm not crazy about the theme and the concept doesn't feel in line with the current explanation of the Multiverse, but that's not a big deal. Some cool cards, a nice mix of things. Seems fair enough to me. I don't give scores, but I didn't recoil (except at my mana being creatures).
I was afraid there might be "cohesion" problems, and specifically that the colorless land might cause a problem in a color block. It could have been white (main Bolster color), but dunno, it feels "wrong" to me to have a random 1-of white land when the rest of the colors wouldn't get one.
The "mana are creatures" just felt too awesome when me and a friend came up with it. I absolutely HAD to put it on a card. It wasn't rule-breaking for the sake of it; I felt that it was pretty cool Also, it is incredibly Johnny. I can think of a ton of fun decks that would use Ur.
As for the "Super Time Warp", I figured that, with Mindslaver being a super-powerful effect, and Time Warp being a powerful effect, putting those two together on the same card that happens to have a set "mechanic" (if you spent only <color> to cast ~) would be absolutely something Flores would preview. It's much more powerful than people would originally give it credit for.
Ancients are a new race for the block. The beings on Masa have an incredibly long lifespan; the Ancients are all creatures who happened to live from before the 'mending; they are innately connected to each other. The flavor of him is that he is a peacekeeper on a Plane at war.
I overcosted Bolster because I have no idea how powerful it will be. It has no limitation; you can use it as many times as you want at instant-speed. I wanted to be cautious.
Lastly, Aspect went through about 300 wordings before I came to "as long as". It is the most efficient wording and it makes the most sense. Everything else either left holes or straight-up didn't do what I wanted it to do.
Thanks about Original Sin! It's part of a cycle that gets much stronger if you don't have any instants or sorceries in your graveyard (the originals, ya know?). They are all effects that are canonically strong in decks that thrive on instants and sorceries.
I don't know if I could have fit another Bolster card and another Precursor into the previews; they were pretty jam-packed. I suppose I could have done a blue sorcery with Precursor for Flores' column though. Darn.
Oh well good thing I didn't actually get in.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
T2:
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
This is great news. First the McRib now Time Spiral!
Ur could be fun to experiment with correct wordings for though.
Whenever you add mana to your mana pool, put a 1/1 mana? token of that color onto the battlefield with "When this is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, pay 1."
Whenever mana is removed from your mana pool, exile that many mana? tokens you control.
Mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as phases and turns end. (Or however you correctly word that ability.)
Ur could be fun to experiment with correct wordings for though.
Whenever you add mana to your mana pool, put a 1/1 mana? token of that color onto the battlefield with "When this is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, pay 1."
Whenever mana is from your mana pool, exile that manay mana? tokens you control.
Mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as phases and turns end. (Or however you correctly word that ability.
Heh, what happens if you don't pay 1? Maybe
Whenever you add mana to your mana pool, you may put a 1/1 colorless Spirit token into play with Haste and "At the beginning of the end step, exile ~."
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
T2:
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
This is great news. First the McRib now Time Spiral!
Alright, let me try my hand at one of these reviews. I like your world setting and I think it comes across strongly through the cards. It sort of reminds me of Legions for instants/sorceries, the way you can make almost any card type with an instant or sorcery (sorry, not the most flattering comparison, but I mean it in a good way!).
Individual cards:
1. Very nice planeswalker. I think a good planeswalker design for this challenge is one that plays well with the mechanics of the set, but can function on its own. This does that. The only thing drawback is that most of the time you're just gonna use your lands for the first ability because of how hard it is to pull off an ultimate, though I could see someone trying to ramp out a huge spell.
2. Neat, though I wonder if this is the theme that MaRo thinks was way overused. I used it too, and I saw a few others that did as well. I like that this card is a sorcery. To get the instant wrath, you have to go through more hoops. I wonder how many Constructed decks would want a card like this though, doesn't seem to help the decks that would want a wrath.
3. Not that innovative but good flavor. This + Krast =
4. Feels common to me, but it's powerful enough that uncommon can be justified. Mechanic is simple but useful.
5. I'd prefer 2 or 3 rather than X, sacrificing an Illusion is already a bit of a cost and it's hard to have double the cost of a spell. But I like this card, pretty open-ended.
6. The wording of Spellbind changed, slightly. Good build-around card though.
7. A little too confusing for my tastes, and I think only the second ability is that useful. Also doesn't feel that green to me. I'd say this is the weakest of your batch.
8. I wish the two abilities were more symmetrical with "Name a card". The second ability is a little confusing: you can take their Morph creature that's already on the battlefield and cast it again?
9. Not too crazy, but a good card. At first I thought it might have power issues, but by the time you can play an instant/sorcery, play G, and have this land untapped, you'll be several turns into the game.
10. I like this design space a lot. I would have changed it to "If you cast this spell from somewhere other than your hand" for added fun with face-down-ness.
Overall, solid batch of cards. I think your limited environment would be pretty fun to play, but the cards would be useful in other formats as well. If this has a failing, I'd say it's that it's not that exciting or out there.
Unfortunately, I don't believe the "in play" rules/sorcery rule is actually possible under current rules. (It was one of the issues Suspend had, if I recall correctly.)
I'm surprised you thought Guardians of Floris was so strong; I am not a fan.
Most of the entries on the wiki are trying way too hard. There were too many new keywords, emblems, tokens, and zone changes. Over half of the 40ish submissions I've seen would be completely inaccessible to a new player. Others just outright violate rules or design principles. Furthermore, many of the entries that do have clever designs don't have a cohesive feel to them (that's certainly a problem I have).
Guardians of Floriss doesn't have the most mechanical depth, it's true. But everything is immediately grokkable. The flavor is conveyed clearly by rules text (which is what this contest is all about). Every card ties back t the theme of the set, even those without a keyword.
In terms of polish, it's just the best on the wiki. And I think that's an important consideration.
So of the feedback I got for my mock submission, "not feeling the flavor" was always present. And to that, I guess I'm confused what is meant. Is that to say the cards don't align with the blurb above them? Should I have picked different things entirely?
My biggest issue is that I felt like I shouldn't load up on the keywords and whatnot. One of each new thing, yes. Definitely. But everything having something new? Absolutely not. Is this what people are getting at, when I make a more general card (e.g. - Chronicler Angel) instead of something that flat out says "HI I AM IN THEME!!1ONEONETILDE"?
Maybe I'm just overthinking it, or maybe I need examples of "Do it this way", y'know?
So of the feedback I got for my mock submission, "not feeling the flavor" was always present. And to that, I guess I'm confused what is meant. Is that to say the cards don't align with the blurb above them? Should I have picked different things entirely?
My biggest issue is that I felt like I shouldn't load up on the keywords and whatnot. One of each new thing, yes. Definitely. But everything having something new? Absolutely not. Is this what people are getting at, when I make a more general card (e.g. - Chronicler Angel) instead of something that flat out says "HI I AM IN THEME!!1ONEONETILDE"?
Maybe I'm just overthinking it, or maybe I need examples of "Do it this way", y'know?
Your cards don't feel like preview cards. They feel like limited filler, and they don't give you a sense of what either the card or the block is supposed to be.
Basically, if people on the forum have talked about it, if its an obvious issue, if its low-hanging fruit... Why go for it? You have to compete with everyone else. And maybe part of the reason why design hasn't gone into them yet is because they are dangerous.
Just my perspective. My entry certainly did not hit any balls out of the park though, so its not like my decision is relevant enough that it could be even conceived as advice or I told you so's.
EDIT: @zubr: I should say your brief sentences actually helped me parse the details a bit. Thank you a lot!
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
Your submission isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be, you know. You're your own harshest critic, but you're really hard on yourself. Honestly? I wouldn't be surprised to see you Top 8.
All that aside, could you do a "card by card" analysis for my cards? It would be nice to have a good designers thoughts on my cards. I want to perfect my craft as much as possible for next time.
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
ManinBox
Mirguu: One of the better planeswalker designs I've seen in a while. Good job.
Dragon: The Aspect mechanic seems like a lot of wierdness for something that could easily be written "control 3+ tapped mountains".
Bolster: I'm always nervous about text-box copying. That's probably just me, it's a fine common (a lot like forecast).
Equipment: +8/+8 if I'm playing monocolored. That's kinda broken. Good idea though, just needs to be more expensive/smaller boost.
Ursuar: This is a legendary rare? Merfolk Seastalkers has a similar ability without the ancient-clause and Sun Titan has a better body.
Original Sin: Original (get it). But the flavor connection is loose and it doesn't tie into your plane's theme much. A well-designed card, but it doesn't flow with the rest of the set.
Mastery of Time: Sheer. Undiluted. Awesome. You knocked this one out of the park.
Ur: I have no clue whether the rules allow this or not. If they do, it's a fantastic card. If they don't, not so much. Still, points for sheer WTF factor.
Precursor: Vengevine is nearly impossible to get rid of, and you want to make a Vengevine mechanic? Three of these things (or really any three red precursor cards) forms an infinite loop. Punishing Fire is good enough to be played in extended with Grove. You've just gotten rid of the grove part and brought that madness to standard.
Gurella Encampent: Solid design, plays well with set themes, nothing bad to say.
Best card: Mastery of Time.
Worst card: Urusar.
Overall: There are some solid designs here, but your keywords aren't particularly good. Aspect is really complicated for what it effectively is, and precursor is very close to being broken. It's not enough to be innovative: you need to be innovative without being complicated.
@Kultcher
Dweller: Well, that's certainly new. To be honest, I have a hard time evaluating this card. I don't like the fact that I lose life whenever I want to do something cool, but I do like the idea of a dormant planeswalker with no +'s or -'s. Points for innovation if nothing else.
Ascension: Awesome design. I would say it would be better if you could trigger off a card on the field, but this is a good card.
Warmarket: Another cool card. The wording's off (you don't need the weird flash clause), but the design is solid. Timmy will love it.
Death Sentence: Is this really worth a keyword? It's a fine card, but there's only so much new ground to be had with alternate costs. Just as long as you don't start pitching cards from your hand.
Vailia: This thing needs a Iona-like cost. It shuts down entire decks and is pretty much impervious to removal. The first ability is great, the second ability is un-fun.
Ivysnap: Sure, I guess. Quillspike is much better at what this card is trying to do though, and I'll take Greenweaver to make my mana any day.
Sentry: Uh, subtype? Other than that, it seems more of a johnny card than a spike card. I guess it depends on how competitive counter-decks are.
Mimograph: Wait. When did the multicolored theme come in? Multicolored is only let in when its a set theme (planeswalkers are the exception, there's not from the set so they can do whatever they want). Notice the lack of multicolor in TS, ZEN, or SOM. This is a problem.
Improvised arsonal: Bad choice of counter names, fine ability. Needs to say target Recruit creature gets +1/+1. We're starting to get keyword-fevor here. Hope this is the last one.
Land: This is common? Turntimber Grove is a common land. This thing has so many moving parts that it's pretty much gotta be a rare. Let's see, you can sac it to make an insect, it's got a new keyword, and its 8 lines of text. That's a rare, which is not what the challenge asked for.
Best card: Ascenson.
Worst card: The land.
Overall: 5 keywords. Five. Alternate costs don't need to be keywords (they've never been before) and they're not particularly new or exciting. Salvage looks like a dredge-like disaster waiting to happen for any value bigger than 1 mana. Rarities are off. At the end of the day, I'm still not sure what your set's about. And that's not good.
I will gladly give you a card by card.
First thoughts: Okay I've read this submission before. Wary about themes, but looking into execution.
1) I'm actually of the mindset that planeswalkers should be about expressing an idea. And I feel like yours is pretty good, no major warnings. Abilities synergize. Loyalty a little low starting for its CMC though, but that is a development issue.
2) Aspect is worded weird "As long as" doesn't feel right. I'll be honest, I'm not for counting mana in mana pools. But Flamebreak is a pretty cool bit, but the guy might be too efficient. As long as he makes it to your end step the turn you cast him, you'll get it off. Also you can do it on your opponent's turn, even without a card in hand.
3) Cool trick. Might be too expensive for the trick, but the overall cost seems fine.
4) Oh wow. A permanent effect. It is neat at the very least. Artifacts with mana of one color seem to play better, in my mind.
5) Powerful recurring effect, based on having ancients. No others have been previewed yet. I'm not feeling the flavor ooze, but its not a complete miss
6) Okay, Original Sin is AWESOME. The name, the flavor, the ability. I like it. A lot. But suddenly now I'm looking for another card type? Didn't know it was relevant.
7) I'm not actually sure if the card fits the column. That is a crap ton of blue mana. The effect is pretty cool though.
8) No. It is too blatantly breaking a rule poorly. And it doesn't even feel Johnny except that it breaks a rule.
9) A loop to throw at me; I thought I was done looking at new mechanics. Not a big deal though. Precursor seems reasonable.
10) The land is not doing it for me. Way too many drawbacks (no color in a color loving set? ETBT?) With an ability that I have a hard time evaluating because I haven't been given context to evaluate it. The only bolster you've shown is 2W, which I'd rather pay than lose a land drop
Overall: Cohesion. You've shown me some mechanics that care about color, which can be cool. You've shown me one bolster, some bolster support, a card that cares about Instants/Sorcerys, and a Precursor. I would have liked another Bolster and another Precursor. I'm not crazy about the theme and the concept doesn't feel in line with the current explanation of the Multiverse, but that's not a big deal. Some cool cards, a nice mix of things. Seems fair enough to me. I don't give scores, but I didn't recoil (except at my mana being creatures).
I've seen a few cards submitted twice, and it's weird when one person is the original designer and the other is just borrowing it. An example: that demon that puts all the cards in your hand onto the battlefield facedown. Are they going to respect the guy who borrows it? The same guy who borrowed the demon borrowed a different card from another contestant. I would've been wary of doing this, but I don't know if the judges will care. The whole furniture maker/interior designer thing.
I don't think I like planeswalkers with static abilities. It takes away from the uniqueness of the card type.
Bad keyword: Ethereal (This card is an enchantment in addition to its normal card type.) On a creature. :[
Favorite line I've seen, maybe, which might not be from a real submission (it's an emblem given by a planeswalker's ultimate): "Whenever a creature with deathtouch you control deals damage to an opponent, he or she loses the game." That's hilarious.
I'm amused by efforts to fix phasing. Is this a mechanic people have been clamoring to bring back? I guess so! It's coupled with counting exiled cards, which just sounds like a pain.
Ugh, artifact enchantment. No thanks.
Jeez, leveling, flip cards, and attaching facedown cards to creatures as auras with no text? These abilities all do basically the same thing; one set doesn't need all three.
I think pairing haste with abilities that actively go against it (costs less per damage dealt, for instance) is a tension that should be used sparingly, if at all.
Please don't make me shuffle every turn.
Favorites so far: Amenta (cohesive without being completely monotonous, mostly clean cards), Korovi (flavorful concepts for abstract effects), Aurora (clever way to put life gain in every color, but might be too one-note), Anonia (solid, doesn't feel over-designed), Wodotha (I think I'm less excited about this one than I used to be; it has good designs, but the flavor connection may not be quite as strong as I originally thought), Kharuk (objectively the best, as all right-thinking people know; creator is a genius sex-machine).
RE: Death Sentence. You may be right. I kept it as a keyword because I wanted to keep space open for cards that said, "whenever you play a card for it's leverage cost, ~effect~." Thought I could probably just have cards that say, "Whenever you play a card for less than it's mana cost" and that would be more far-reaching.
RE: Ivysnap: This was more meant to be indicative of a greater subtheme of green and sometimes black "using" -1/-1 counters to benefits a la Quillspike.
RE: Sentry: Was put in the Spike spot because he hurts Planeswalkers (though perhaps not enough?).
RE: Mimeophage: Hm, I might've flubbed here. Personally, I miss the days when multicolor cards were more "organic" and just appeared where it made sense for them to appear, instead of being a set-defining theme. Consider this my petition to go back to the old ways.
RE: The land and salvage in general: Yeah, I deeply regret that. First of all, Salvage is much more interesting on spells, it's hard to design lands around it. My original incarnation was a bit smoother but I ended up changing it last minute. It turned into a better mechanic but it made working it with lands almost impossible. What I should have done was make it come into play as normal, produce 1 colorless when tapped, and salvage for a green. As it is, I don't think it's rare but you're right that it's not common either.
RE: Keywords: I don't really count ability words as keywords. I kept them because I thought they provided a nice theme/flavor link. Was probably a misstep; I should've at least dropped Command as an ability word. That said I don't think 5 is totally wild-crazy out of line. Ravnica had 5 (counting hybrid).
Thanks again!
I think your background is the best of the prison worlds I've read. Sounds pretty cool. I wasn't sold on the command business at first, but it's grown on me.
Side note: I also considered doing some CMC matters stuff in my set, and metaghost/pachuco cadaver (or however it's spelled) pointed out that the traditional CMC cut-off between big and little was 3-4 as in Smother, Austere Command, Consume the Meek, etc. I guess there's no need to keep this, but shifting it up one seems a little inelegant to me.
Individual cards:
Dweller Dormant: I don't think I like a planeswalker designed with no way to change its own loyalty. Yes, it's within the rules, and it can still get destroyed by damage, but it seems like a pointless twist on the card type. The abilities are fine and obviously synergistic (maybe a little too obviously).
Tyrant's Ascension: Interesting. I'm a little worried that command will be too easy to trigger, but I could be wrong; it seems a little strong for its cost. Asymmetrical board sweepers are always exciting, though.
Warmarket Bazaar: Seems fine. A small group of players will like it, no one else will care. Pretty good design for the column.
Death Sentence: Leverage feels pretty artificial, but it interacts well with the CMC theme, so it's okay. Otherwise a pretty ordinary kill spell.
Vailia: I personally don't like cards that shut down huge chunks of opponent's hands, but R&D seems okay it, and at least it'll be over soon.
Teeming Ivy Snap: This card doesn't much excite me. It's okay.
Nullifier Sentry: Why not just make this work on any permanent? Also, I suggest "Counters can't be put on permanents," since I don't think this does what you want it to do. I assume it's meant to stop planeswalkers, since it's your Top Decks card, but I don't think paying costs is an effect. I could be wrong on this, though. I don't really know the rules.
Assuming it works on planeswalkers, I like the flavor connection.
Mutating Mimeophage: This card seems like too much effort for too little reward to me. Feels like it's trying to do too much. I am not a fan.
Improvised Arsenal: Calling these equipment counters seems pointlessly confusing. This card also has a huge potential to muck up the board, since it makes chump blockers for 1W. I think the same idea could be conveyed in a much cleaner way. Not a very good design in my opinion.
Felled Thicket: Pretty interesting, but with salvage, it feels like it has the possibility to be a little too strong. It's two mana and a guy one turn, which is pretty good.
Overall, there's nothing that rules your submission out of the top 8, and it's probably above average for what I've seen, but it doesn't blow me away. Who knows what the judges are looking for, though.
EDIT AFTER READING SOME POSTS: I think the CMC matters theme comes through strongly enough, and personally I don't like the submissions where all the cards have the word 'enchantment' on them. I think one-off multicolor is probably okay. Look at Wrexial, the Rising Deep, for example. You probably don't want them below rare, though, or maybe an uncommon cycle, unless it's a major theme. Then again, if you have common gold cards, guess what? It's a major theme.
Is there a standard counter type for putting counters on Enchantments? Or is that something that really just isn't done?
BUT I think you are bringing up another interesting point (you seem to do that a lot). I just sat here for a few moments trying to say something more useful, but all I got is: If you do both well, it should be harder to tell which you did. I feel though, if you dug up for four submissions from other people's pages, you are bound to way too many constraints on showing off your own mechanics within the remaining cards.
Scars has a heavy artifact theme, which helps dodge color screw, and cantrips. (Including, arguably, the Spellbombs.)
M11 has Scry.
Rise has levelers, which allow you to compete even if you can only make two or three mana at a time. It also has cantrips.
Zendikar has kicker, which appears on cards that can be played for a smaller cost than their "biggest bang" if you're mana screwed, and a limited environment where many of the best creatures are the cheapest ones, so curves are generally very low compared to many other blocks.
Shards has Cycling.
Shadowmoor has hybrid mana, which helps avoid color screw.
Lorwyn has Clash.
And so on. Note that these mechanics don't necessarily have to appear on tons and tons of cards, but every block makes some concessions to helping players avoid mana/color screw. I think these mechanics are generally seen as unglamorous, and are typically unappreciated by players who don't play a lot of limited, but they're very important. Granted, it can be assumed that you're using cantrips for smoothing, but I think that including a limited smoothing mechanic demonstrates a knowledge of what sort of things a set needs at a fundamental level regardless of theme. (Limited smoothing mechanics can have appeal to non-limited players as well, as Clash has a little of and Morph and Hybrid mana have tons of.) Mechanics like Retrace help deal with mana flood, although not every block has something out there specifically for that. Still, it's good to recognize what your mechanics are actually doing for the play experience besides simply being novel ways of moving cards around.
After a while, I only needed to see one card I disliked to discount the whole thing. I wonder how much of this will happen with the judges; it's probably easiest to just eliminate the people who make rookie mistakes on the first pass, then look at what's going on with the rest of the field. One aggressively unfun card might doom you.
I saw some interesting drawbacks, but I don't think they were a good idea. Cards you give to your opponents, or that you give copies of to your opponents, or that you can lose control of if your opponents do the right things, these are not very appealing designs most of the time. Some submissions had more than one of these, which seems a terrible choice to me (I say this as someone who initially planned to have a mechanic like this in my block; you can check out the deprecated monuments in the mechanics section of my wiki).
It's true, there weren't many limited smoothing mechanics, but I think that's kind of the nature of the business. When you're pulling together preview cards, cycling and cantrips are not going to be on your mind, especially when cantrips feel like lazy ways to boost card power. I'm not surprised you didn't see things like this; they only make sense en masse.
On the plus (?) side: I didn't see any submissions that I thought were absolute locks. This is good if, like me, you estimate that you're near the middle of the pack; since the variance isn't large you might still have a chance. Depressing thought: 19 people have already been eliminated. There's roughly a 1/5 chance that you're out!
I suspect that the people not on the wiki are going to have worse submissions, on average, than the people with pages. I think there are twelve or thirteen of these contestants. I found there was a strong correlation between size of wiki site and strength of submission, which makes sense: better collaboration produced better submissions. A lot of people who didn't post their entries had pretty bare-bones pages, so I'm hoping they don't much factor into the final 8.
Anyway, here's an interesting submission not on the wiki. It has one of the most inventive themes I've seen (subtypes matter) and is some kind of ultra-tribal block. I found it intriguing, but many of the cards felt a little over-designed to me.
I also liked Rhyfel, which has some very functional keywords and a strongly expressed combat theme.
Anyway, now that I have conquered the wiki I must sleep. Good luck all.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
Two things I already know that don't need to be repeated: Shouldn't have had the demon be my introduction to exhume. The land is badly balanced.
I was afraid there might be "cohesion" problems, and specifically that the colorless land might cause a problem in a color block. It could have been white (main Bolster color), but dunno, it feels "wrong" to me to have a random 1-of white land when the rest of the colors wouldn't get one.
The "mana are creatures" just felt too awesome when me and a friend came up with it. I absolutely HAD to put it on a card. It wasn't rule-breaking for the sake of it; I felt that it was pretty cool Also, it is incredibly Johnny. I can think of a ton of fun decks that would use Ur.
As for the "Super Time Warp", I figured that, with Mindslaver being a super-powerful effect, and Time Warp being a powerful effect, putting those two together on the same card that happens to have a set "mechanic" (if you spent only <color> to cast ~) would be absolutely something Flores would preview. It's much more powerful than people would originally give it credit for.
Ancients are a new race for the block. The beings on Masa have an incredibly long lifespan; the Ancients are all creatures who happened to live from before the 'mending; they are innately connected to each other. The flavor of him is that he is a peacekeeper on a Plane at war.
I overcosted Bolster because I have no idea how powerful it will be. It has no limitation; you can use it as many times as you want at instant-speed. I wanted to be cautious.
Lastly, Aspect went through about 300 wordings before I came to "as long as". It is the most efficient wording and it makes the most sense. Everything else either left holes or straight-up didn't do what I wanted it to do.
Thanks about Original Sin! It's part of a cycle that gets much stronger if you don't have any instants or sorceries in your graveyard (the originals, ya know?). They are all effects that are canonically strong in decks that thrive on instants and sorceries.
I don't know if I could have fit another Bolster card and another Precursor into the previews; they were pretty jam-packed. I suppose I could have done a blue sorcery with Precursor for Flores' column though. Darn.
Oh well good thing I didn't actually get in.
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
Whenever you add mana to your mana pool, put a 1/1 mana? token of that color onto the battlefield with "When this is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, pay 1."
Whenever mana is removed from your mana pool, exile that many mana? tokens you control.
Mana doesn't empty from your mana pool as phases and turns end. (Or however you correctly word that ability.)
Heh, what happens if you don't pay 1? Maybe
Whenever you add mana to your mana pool, you may put a 1/1 colorless Spirit token into play with Haste and "At the beginning of the end step, exile ~."
UR Ascension
Mono-U Birthing Pod
Alright, let me try my hand at one of these reviews. I like your world setting and I think it comes across strongly through the cards. It sort of reminds me of Legions for instants/sorceries, the way you can make almost any card type with an instant or sorcery (sorry, not the most flattering comparison, but I mean it in a good way!).
Individual cards:
1. Very nice planeswalker. I think a good planeswalker design for this challenge is one that plays well with the mechanics of the set, but can function on its own. This does that. The only thing drawback is that most of the time you're just gonna use your lands for the first ability because of how hard it is to pull off an ultimate, though I could see someone trying to ramp out a huge spell.
2. Neat, though I wonder if this is the theme that MaRo thinks was way overused. I used it too, and I saw a few others that did as well. I like that this card is a sorcery. To get the instant wrath, you have to go through more hoops. I wonder how many Constructed decks would want a card like this though, doesn't seem to help the decks that would want a wrath.
3. Not that innovative but good flavor. This + Krast =
4. Feels common to me, but it's powerful enough that uncommon can be justified. Mechanic is simple but useful.
5. I'd prefer 2 or 3 rather than X, sacrificing an Illusion is already a bit of a cost and it's hard to have double the cost of a spell. But I like this card, pretty open-ended.
6. The wording of Spellbind changed, slightly. Good build-around card though.
7. A little too confusing for my tastes, and I think only the second ability is that useful. Also doesn't feel that green to me. I'd say this is the weakest of your batch.
8. I wish the two abilities were more symmetrical with "Name a card". The second ability is a little confusing: you can take their Morph creature that's already on the battlefield and cast it again?
9. Not too crazy, but a good card. At first I thought it might have power issues, but by the time you can play an instant/sorcery, play G, and have this land untapped, you'll be several turns into the game.
10. I like this design space a lot. I would have changed it to "If you cast this spell from somewhere other than your hand" for added fun with face-down-ness.
Overall, solid batch of cards. I think your limited environment would be pretty fun to play, but the cards would be useful in other formats as well. If this has a failing, I'd say it's that it's not that exciting or out there.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
Most of the entries on the wiki are trying way too hard. There were too many new keywords, emblems, tokens, and zone changes. Over half of the 40ish submissions I've seen would be completely inaccessible to a new player. Others just outright violate rules or design principles. Furthermore, many of the entries that do have clever designs don't have a cohesive feel to them (that's certainly a problem I have).
Guardians of Floriss doesn't have the most mechanical depth, it's true. But everything is immediately grokkable. The flavor is conveyed clearly by rules text (which is what this contest is all about). Every card ties back t the theme of the set, even those without a keyword.
In terms of polish, it's just the best on the wiki. And I think that's an important consideration.
My biggest issue is that I felt like I shouldn't load up on the keywords and whatnot. One of each new thing, yes. Definitely. But everything having something new? Absolutely not. Is this what people are getting at, when I make a more general card (e.g. - Chronicler Angel) instead of something that flat out says "HI I AM IN THEME!!1ONEONETILDE"?
Maybe I'm just overthinking it, or maybe I need examples of "Do it this way", y'know?
Past Ruminations
Links are broken, will fix in near future.
- Kaladesh
- Zendikar
- Rise of the Eldrazi
- Alara Reborn
- Innistrad <- Personal Favorite
- Dark Ascension
- Avacyn Restored
- Theros
- Return to Ravnica
- Tarkir
Your cards don't feel like preview cards. They feel like limited filler, and they don't give you a sense of what either the card or the block is supposed to be.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)