Eldritch Construct4
Creature — Construct Horror [U]
When Eldritch Construct enters the battlefield, tap it. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Borph 4
When Eldritch Construct is turned face up, you lose 4 life. "The ancient horrors have been dormant for centuries. They can be quite slow to awaken, unless, of course, you were to offer them... tribute."
—Dakalos the Insane
5/5
Yeah it was meant to be a tough challenge. The "Whenever you draw a card, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature." on my card from the previous challenge was an idea, though it is a triggered ability. Other things I've considered:
"Mindlink" - Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to draw that many cards - though this would be highly limited to low-power creatures
Madden - Damage dealt by this creature also causes that player to put that many cards from the top of his or her library into his her graveyard - a little complicated
"Monastery X" - Spells that target this creature cost an additional X to cast.
Cycling - not new and not uniquely creature
Evoke - captures blue's spell focus, but usually requires ETB or dies triggered abilities
But even so, I remember one criticism that particularly rub me the wrong way was something like "hybrid mana just looks ugly". From a certain point of view I get what was intended there (trolling and trying to be funny), but from another perspective it's just trashing someone else's work. It's rather clear which entries are meant to be funny and which are meant to be serious, so you can adjust your feedback to the... audience, so to speak "Smile:
A lot of times people here can have a serious message underneath a trollish shell. In your instance, another way to rephrase "hybrid mana looks ugly" is "The concept of multiple different hybrid mana symbols on a card is inelegant in visuals and gameplay." Personally, I think it's passable, but many have regarded it to look cluttered and to be highly confusing, as there are many, many different ways to cast a card with different hybrid symbols. It's especially confusing when it comes to gameplay; say you had a Underground River, a Sandsteppe Citadel, a Yavimaya Coast, a Murmuring Bosk, and a Wooded Bastion. What's the best way to cast a card that costs (W/U)(U/B)(B/R)(R/G)(G/W)? It gets especially more confusing when you add it to a much more common scenario, where you're using fetchlands and shocklands or original dual lands, because you have to plan ahead several turns with your mana base in highly unconventional ways. It's not intuitive, and if it leads to gameplay where it takes you a minute to decipher how to best cast a spell, that's probably poor design.
Innovative ideas that need a little bit of mechanical polish to get there.
Super flavorful cards (where the flavour is conveyed mechanically).
Balanced, but safe, "just fine".
Everything else.
Of course, my opinions w/r/t these points will change with the wind.
I also really like it when numbers line up in accordance to my own internal codes of aesthetics. I've tried to explain this a few times before, and have failed miserably on every occasion.
As for appearances of the "in-crowd" purposefully choosing their buddies to win: I never do this, and I hope the rest don't either. There's a few possible explanations for it though.
1. When you know someone and have seen their designs a lot, you start to understand their designs more easily and you start to share opinions on what's good design.
2. When someone has a reputation for being experienced/good/great, you're more likely to subconsciously judge their entry higher than if you had no expectations. Most of the people who win CF a lot have these sort of reputations. (Back when I used to judge MCC a lot, I would make an effort to clear my mind of these biases every time. Here, its more casual and I usually hurry through my judgings without thinking about that sort of thing.)
3. Most of the people who win a lot are design veterans, have designed tons of custom cards over the years, and really do design worthy cards fairly often.
4ish. Sometimes judges are bad, lazy, busy*, and/or bad. Except they're not ever bad because when we were allowed to complain about judgings in the distant past, it was a huge non-stop whinefest. Stupid not-bad judges, letting people win who aren't me
*there's a reason most of my entries are joke entries and its the same reason my judgings are usually bad.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'll bet you wish you had a non-unglued/unhinged card that shared your first name.
Ugin's Shadow6
Creature - Bear Spirit (R)
When ~ is turned face up, if you control no other colorless nonland permanents, manifest the top two cards of your library.
Borph - 7
5/6
IIW:Already powerful cards with delve implemented.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My thoughts are with the friends and family of the Orlando Shooting victims and with the rest of the LGBTQA+ community.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
Necarg, please don't acknowledge this in any way whatsoever.
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
Blacklist2WB
Sorcery (M)
Name a nonland card. Search target opponent's graveyard, hand, library, and sideboard for all cards with that name and exile them. For the rest of the match, all cards exiled this way remain in exile and that player's minimum deck size is reduced by the number of cards exiled this way. "That sounded exciting."
IIW: Order of Leitbur
EDIT: Forgot about deck size. This is probably just horrible.
no clue what the challenge even is so I'm just going to make whatever I want
Apprentice CryomancerWU
Creature - Human Wizard (U)
Flash
First strike
Whenever Apprentice Cryomancer deals combat damage to a creature, detain that creature. (Until your next turn, that creature can't attack or block and its activated abilities can't be activated.)
2/1
Borphfiend Demon3BB
Creature — Demon (R)
Trample
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice another creature. If you can't, turn Borphfiend Demon face down.
Borph — 2B, Sacrifice another creature
5/4
Artificial Meteor2RR
Enchantment - Aura (M)
Enchant land.
Enchanted land has flying.
Vanishing 4 (This permanent enters the battlefield with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When the last is removed, sacrifice it.)
When Artificial Meteor is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no time counters on it, destroy all lands and Artificial Meteor deals 13 damage to each creature and each player.
Dragonlord Silumgar2BGU
Legendary Creature - Elder Dragon (M)
Flying, hexproof 1B, Exile a creature card from your graveyard: Draw a card. You gain 2 life.
3/6
Creature — Construct Horror [U]
When Eldritch Construct enters the battlefield, tap it. It doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step.
Borph 4
When Eldritch Construct is turned face up, you lose 4 life.
"The ancient horrors have been dormant for centuries. They can be quite slow to awaken, unless, of course, you were to offer them... tribute."
—Dakalos the Insane
5/5
IIW: Insanity
"Mindlink" - Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to draw that many cards - though this would be highly limited to low-power creatures
Madden - Damage dealt by this creature also causes that player to put that many cards from the top of his or her library into his her graveyard - a little complicated
"Monastery X" - Spells that target this creature cost an additional X to cast.
Cycling - not new and not uniquely creature
Evoke - captures blue's spell focus, but usually requires ETB or dies triggered abilities
A lot of times people here can have a serious message underneath a trollish shell. In your instance, another way to rephrase "hybrid mana looks ugly" is "The concept of multiple different hybrid mana symbols on a card is inelegant in visuals and gameplay." Personally, I think it's passable, but many have regarded it to look cluttered and to be highly confusing, as there are many, many different ways to cast a card with different hybrid symbols. It's especially confusing when it comes to gameplay; say you had a Underground River, a Sandsteppe Citadel, a Yavimaya Coast, a Murmuring Bosk, and a Wooded Bastion. What's the best way to cast a card that costs (W/U)(U/B)(B/R)(R/G)(G/W)? It gets especially more confusing when you add it to a much more common scenario, where you're using fetchlands and shocklands or original dual lands, because you have to plan ahead several turns with your mana base in highly unconventional ways. It's not intuitive, and if it leads to gameplay where it takes you a minute to decipher how to best cast a spell, that's probably poor design.
My personal judging preferences go a little something like:
- Well-designed, meticulously balanced, perfect
- Innovative ideas that need a little bit of mechanical polish to get there.
- Super flavorful cards (where the flavour is conveyed mechanically).
- Balanced, but safe, "just fine".
- Everything else.
Of course, my opinions w/r/t these points will change with the wind.planeswalkerscards.I also really like it when numbers line up in accordance to my own internal codes of aesthetics. I've tried to explain this a few times before, and have failed miserably on every occasion.
1. When you know someone and have seen their designs a lot, you start to understand their designs more easily and you start to share opinions on what's good design.
2. When someone has a reputation for being experienced/good/great, you're more likely to subconsciously judge their entry higher than if you had no expectations. Most of the people who win CF a lot have these sort of reputations. (Back when I used to judge MCC a lot, I would make an effort to clear my mind of these biases every time. Here, its more casual and I usually hurry through my judgings without thinking about that sort of thing.)
3. Most of the people who win a lot are design veterans, have designed tons of custom cards over the years, and really do design worthy cards fairly often.
4ish. Sometimes judges are bad, lazy, busy*, and/or bad. Except they're not ever bad because when we were allowed to complain about judgings in the distant past, it was a huge non-stop whinefest. Stupid not-bad judges, letting people win who aren't me
*there's a reason most of my entries are joke entries and its the same reason my judgings are usually bad.
No tears, only loyalty counters
Creature - Bear Spirit (R)
When ~ is turned face up, if you control no other colorless nonland permanents, manifest the top two cards of your library.
Borph - 7
5/6
IIW:Already powerful cards with delve implemented.
Check out my Newborder Peasant Cube here! http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/37467
True Name Mafia (Win),Clan Contest IX Mafia (Win), Bravely Default Mafia (Loss), BOTAS (loss), BfV (Loss), Ace Attourney (loss)
Rules Advisor before they were eradicated
Creature - Bear (Uncommon)
Haste
Whenever Ravagar of Temur is turned face up, it get +2/+2 until end of turn.
Borph 1RG
2/2
Next: A three-colored card.
Sorcery (M)
Name a nonland card. Search target opponent's graveyard, hand, library, and sideboard for all cards with that name and exile them. For the rest of the match, all cards exiled this way remain in exile and that player's minimum deck size is reduced by the number of cards exiled this way.
"That sounded exciting."
IIW: Order of Leitbur
EDIT: Forgot about deck size. This is probably just horrible.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
Apprentice Cryomancer WU
Creature - Human Wizard (U)
Flash
First strike
Whenever Apprentice Cryomancer deals combat damage to a creature, detain that creature. (Until your next turn, that creature can't attack or block and its activated abilities can't be activated.)
2/1
IIW: high-power commons
Creature — Demon (R)
Trample
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice another creature. If you can't, turn Borphfiend Demon face down.
Borph — 2B, Sacrifice another creature
5/4
IIW: Legendary equipment.
3. CrustaceanCrusader
4. Avatarz
Enchantment - Aura (M)
Enchant land.
Enchanted land has flying.
Vanishing 4 (This permanent enters the battlefield with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When the last is removed, sacrifice it.)
When Artificial Meteor is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, if it had no time counters on it, destroy all lands and Artificial Meteor deals 13 damage to each creature and each player.
IIW: Depth without complexity.
I still remember the "give arbitraryarmor good reviews when his card is actually bad" phase. But yeah, you have made some interesting judgments.
Savage.
Also, that's exactly my point.
L-love y-y-you too
Creature - Bird (C)
Flying
Borph 3
1/2
All the graceful serenity of an angel with all the blunt ferocity of a club.
IIW Sugar free
Your occupation..?
Legendary Creature - Elder Dragon (M)
Flying, hexproof
1B, Exile a creature card from your graveyard: Draw a card. You gain 2 life.
3/6
IIW: if Khans of Tarkir had been a wedge block
1G
Creature - Plant. (C)
Defender
Borph 2
G: Turn Vine barrier face down.
0/5
IIW: a 0/1 for 10 mana