Since you have to announce targets when abilities go onto the stack, you can't actually get the creatures you destroy back with Liliana. Unless having it be two separate sentences overrules everything I thought I understand about Magic. But it kind of reads that way and I'm sure beginners will always play it like that.
How else would it make it past! Attacks! Go! You forgot to add that it can only come back attacking during your combat. That's another line to add, but should be fine then. If you cast this after blockers your card can't be blocked? This is plenty weird. I like it when that effect works during declare attackers. But that makes for bad gameplay as people then have to remember to always play removal during declare blockers. Cute idea, probably has no good execution.
Holy crap. That's too complicated. Can't expect your players to want to do more complex math than addition or substraction.
I like this toolbox. I'm a bit sad you can't give the 1/1 -3/+3. But since the second mode doesn't target you can move a spell to the 1/1? That's weird.
Congrats on winning May!
That being said, I think this contest here is another example of requiring more than one thing for entries being a bad idea. Two people entered Rares. Critiques didn't even notice so far.
Hey, you also submitted a rare! Like me! We were supposed to submit uncommons. Don't tell anyone!
Reads a bit weird, people would probably not understand that the rerouting of spells ends after the spell resolved. A cool counter variant with blocking application.
That's a cute blink variant. But it's a very strong bounce for 2 mana, since you can cast it during attacks and the player can't recast it for another round. Turns the creature off for 2 turns.
Too complex when +0/+4 often does the job. This needs good justification in a set. Also not terribly exciting design.
That's oddly specific, but a good effect to put on a 2/2 to make it stay relevant throughout the game. It might be borderline too complex for common, as it makes attacking and blocking difficult, having to consider that this is a potential 5/5. So I'd at least limit it to becoming blocked. It's a nice space for hybrid, but white is more +2/+2 and usually doesn't get +3/+3. For hybrid one can make an exception though.
I like reach on red cards. I also like low toughness on high power first strike creatures. While I'd enjoy that in a set to play with it's not terribly exciting for design competition.
More like Rich Boy flavor to me. This is plenty complex for a common, pretty sure I'd move this up to uncommon in most sets instantly. I like the gameplay pattern though.
Keywords matter! I love it. It's a lot to check for in a common, but it might just be okay.
Would need to playtest it to see if it plays as nicely as it reads, but I like it. Making tokens with text is weird at common, but I'll allow it.
Repeatable combat math variance that goes anywhere on a common? Not in new world order!
I was hoping that it'd be mostly me seeing the issues with my cards, as I was the one spending the most time with them, but now IcariiFa just went and found them.
Yes, I agree, there's too much counters going on. Funnily, Lore counters wouldn't be axed, as those are used by Sagas. In hindsight I'd just remove the counters from the Mother, as they might cause confusion with +1/+1 counters and as per Gerrard's Mom's suggestion one time caring about historic is enough. I was too deep in the counters matter theme.
The reason why Brennet has no similiarity between his own ability and the Bequest is that this started as a fixed Grandeur. So it's supposed to play well with itself. Having a super big creature that needs blocking makes for an edict. Originally I was going to add trample, but that pushed it over the edge. And yes, Bequest is 'just' the Dauntless Cathar mechanic, but rather Dauntless Cathar is just a discarded design space. I was really disappointed back then when they printed that. I feel like it's a mechanic that deserves a slot in a set. I toyed around with that mechanic before the printing, but never named it.
I think you can't go above Reinforce 1 on common. It's too swingy. Oh well, playtesting.
Actually I liked the synergy between Stronghold and Mending as you get a high cost permanent for free that deals with whatever they put on the board plus more, while the drawback it has, that it can get rid off, doesn't matter so much, because it's going to be gone soon anyway.
Also I didn't catch what The Mending of Dominaria was about even though it's right there in the name. I just don't see it. It wasn't so much about dead stuff, but rather about time issues.
Comments on Gerrard's Mom's cards:
Jeska's Corruption is truly worthy of being a Legendary Sorcery. It fits the flavor well too. What I dislike is dealing 1 damage, when it just flat out destroys anyways. That might confuse players and has this clever-with-itself thing going on that just never feels right.
Tetlok is pretty cool. Makes for cool gameplay even on it's own. Only issue I have is that WotC shied away from using historic in a context, where part of the group doesn't make sense. Non-creature artifacts and sagas are seldom going to deal damage to your opponent. The rare cases they do might justify this though for people to feel clever.
Sparktouched reads exciting. I wonder what it plays like.
Resonate makes good use of the observation that with historic come artifacts. I didn't want to make an artifact centered mechanic, as I felt it turned Dominaria into an artifact set, which it isn't supposed to be and historic already pushed it into that direction too much for my tastes.
I like what Portal Gnome does in terms of it making sense while you have Shadow and while you don't. Great execution. Not sure if I'd want Shadow in a set when the previous set didn't have it. It becomes super-flying and fights for that space. The two sets are likely not going to play well together as both flying creatures and shadow creatures become too good and uninteractive. It IS a fan favorite tho. It's worth trying.
Ogre Sneak5R
Creature - Ogre Rogue (C)
Haste
Skulk
When Ogre Sneak enters the battlefield, you may put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature. It takes the smarts of an ogre to get the idea to sneak past a dragon. It takes the size of a dragon to miss a sneaking ogre.
4/4
Is that how we're going to do it, huh? Well, you can have mine, with your stupid amazing sparktouched mechanic that made me worried my cards weren't flashy enough. Hmpfh!
1 The Mending3GU
Enchantment - Saga (R)
I, II: Each player may put a permanent card from their hand onto the battlefield with a time counter on it.
III: At the end of turn, exile all permanents with a time counter on them.
2 Mother of LoreW
Creature - Human Cleric (U)
Whenever you cast a historic spell, put a lore counter on Mother of Lore. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.) T, Remove a lore counter from Mother of Lore: Target historic permanent gains hexproof and indestructible until end of turn. “It’s more than bookkeeping. You watch out for the things you document.”
1/1
3 The Stronghold Citadel7B
Legendary Artifact (M)
Besiegeable 5 (This enters the battlefield with five brick counters and may be attacked. Damage dealt to this removes that many brick counters. If there are no brick counters on this, put it into it’s owner’s graveyard.)
At the beginning of each upkeep, you may destroy target creature.
[5]
4 Brennet, Scion of Sisay1GG
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior (U)
Whenever Brennet, Scion of Sisay becomes the target of a spell or ability, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn and must be blocked this turn if able. Bequest — GW, Exile Brennet, Scion of Sisay from your graveyard: Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creatures you control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
3/3
5 RemakeU
Instant (C)
Move a counter from target permanent onto a second target permanent.
Reinforce 1—1G(1G, Discard this card: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.) “Now is the time to make this land into a home for all of us.”
—Tatyova, Benthic Druid
The mechanics were cute for something someone came up with on the fly, but surely some of them should have had some GREAT ideas lying around somewhere like we all do. I think Ari is doing some great designs and is a capable designer. Chris is rather creative, even if he doesn't know what a common is. Jeremy played it so safe last round I almost fell asleep reading the designs. No idea what to think of him now.
To discard a mechanic because it's similiar to kicker isn't reasonable. It's more of an issue with Kicker being too broad.
There were plenty of legit gameplay reasons to discard those mechanics, one doesn't need to disagree with how interesting they are from a design-perspective.
A narrowed down copy of kicker is still a good mechanic if it plays well and different enough.
I think you are tied to the rules of the set's vision. So all gold indeed.
But I wonder.. if you take a failed set like Kamigawa, do you get to fix it? Sure, you can't change how Splice onto Arcane works. Or can you go Splice onto Sorcery? Make a Ninja, because they should have been in there? Well, you can't give it Ninjutsu, so that's lame.
The safe bet is probably to take a recent set and show you understood it. Except when you are in a slot where you need to impress the judges.
Jeremy could probably go with Innistrad and make some solid cards and be fine. But Chris needs to go all out, so maybe trying to fix an old set would get him the attention he needs.
#1 Better Anthem at uncommon? Uh oh. On one hand I like how you can prepare for this before you even cast it, on the other hand that makes it even nastier. Also, name sounds like a one-time action.
#2 I guess. Pretty hard to deal with once it happened. Might be problematic. Would probably get points for art match.
#3 Playing into the death theme. Could have expanded to green. I like.
#5 Holy crap that's good. Pushed sea star.
#6 Probably the best slot for that art together with #5. I wonder if the wording works, but that's fun.
#7 Hm. No flying is a big problem here.
#8 I wonder if Johnny would like this. According to what we've seen, this might be a Spike optimization card. Pretty cool board whipe though.
#10 Caring for fights is cool. Neat one.
Notes and thoughts as I read through #4 judgements:
Oh wow, did I not see the face in L. But if I didn't, is it right to design for it?
Funny how Ari made the same mistake as I did and read the black mythic as rare.
I had a similar idea for the red rare as Ari, but didn't go there, thinking it was done before and not innovative enough.
Hah, what Chris designed for the blue Common was exactly what I wanted to design, except I decided it was too complex for common. Also Holy Crap! That's a turtle! I thought it was a mushroom. Oh wow. I designed top-down for mushroom. Seeing how Maro complained it's not turning into a snake I guess he didn't look at the card art either. Lol.
Also love how already two people arrived at 3U 3/3 just like me.
Oh wow. Chris went the same direction I did with the black common. Except his design sucked. Hehe. Go me! Dislike how they didn't like the art for mono-B. I think polling would tell them otherwise.
Love the Kellmoth design!
Why do all people see a Dinosaur in K? It's just a beast. Also they all make tiny dinosaurs. Hello? Dinosaurs are big! Otherwise they're just lizards. Also where does Maro see this as an artifact? It's got plates. Like animals do. Don't need a cyborg for that.
Is grade C the worst she'll give? Because how much worse could this even get than E for a red spell?
Really didn't see Chris continuing. Someone else must have made terrible designs.
Maybe Jeremy should try to get into the creative team. This is kinda weird for a designer.
Aww, she didn't see the sigils. Poor Jeremy.
What even is an Amphin? I never heard that until this challenge.
Ah! Someone else made L into a legendary black creature! I'm not alone!
Nobody understood that revealing the card is meant to induce fear for the coming game
Was it so clear that D is a hellion? I thought it was a wurm.
Oh boy, a D.
I only now realize this challenge is a lot like one of my favorite board games: Mysterium. People really misjudge how general their perception of art is. No two people see the same thing. What's obvious for you is not at all there for the next person. It takes a while until you see what in an art will be recognized by most people.
Welp. Sad to see Ryan go. His mechanic was the best iirc. I think this is a mistake.
Plant tribal! WoooH!
Pfft. Lizard Wizard. Tehee. On that note can we fire Jenna Helland? She might be amazing and what she does and very beneficial to Magic as a whole, but anyone who wants to replace Lizard Wizard with Merfolk Shaman needs to just go away!
Finally! A wurm!
Huh. I was hoping for more exciting designs. Some were pretty great though.
Next challenge is rather overwhelming again. In a way, you can't design good cards, because if those were good, they'd have been in the set. Good luck with that.
That being said, I think this contest here is another example of requiring more than one thing for entries being a bad idea. Two people entered Rares. Critiques didn't even notice so far.
Reads a bit weird, people would probably not understand that the rerouting of spells ends after the spell resolved. A cool counter variant with blocking application.
2. netn10
3. willows
2. willows
3. netn10
Yes, I agree, there's too much counters going on. Funnily, Lore counters wouldn't be axed, as those are used by Sagas. In hindsight I'd just remove the counters from the Mother, as they might cause confusion with +1/+1 counters and as per Gerrard's Mom's suggestion one time caring about historic is enough. I was too deep in the counters matter theme.
The reason why Brennet has no similiarity between his own ability and the Bequest is that this started as a fixed Grandeur. So it's supposed to play well with itself. Having a super big creature that needs blocking makes for an edict. Originally I was going to add trample, but that pushed it over the edge. And yes, Bequest is 'just' the Dauntless Cathar mechanic, but rather Dauntless Cathar is just a discarded design space. I was really disappointed back then when they printed that. I feel like it's a mechanic that deserves a slot in a set. I toyed around with that mechanic before the printing, but never named it.
I think you can't go above Reinforce 1 on common. It's too swingy. Oh well, playtesting.
Actually I liked the synergy between Stronghold and Mending as you get a high cost permanent for free that deals with whatever they put on the board plus more, while the drawback it has, that it can get rid off, doesn't matter so much, because it's going to be gone soon anyway.
Also I didn't catch what The Mending of Dominaria was about even though it's right there in the name. I just don't see it. It wasn't so much about dead stuff, but rather about time issues.
Comments on Gerrard's Mom's cards:
Jeska's Corruption is truly worthy of being a Legendary Sorcery. It fits the flavor well too. What I dislike is dealing 1 damage, when it just flat out destroys anyways. That might confuse players and has this clever-with-itself thing going on that just never feels right.
Tetlok is pretty cool. Makes for cool gameplay even on it's own. Only issue I have is that WotC shied away from using historic in a context, where part of the group doesn't make sense. Non-creature artifacts and sagas are seldom going to deal damage to your opponent. The rare cases they do might justify this though for people to feel clever.
Sparktouched reads exciting. I wonder what it plays like.
Resonate makes good use of the observation that with historic come artifacts. I didn't want to make an artifact centered mechanic, as I felt it turned Dominaria into an artifact set, which it isn't supposed to be and historic already pushed it into that direction too much for my tastes.
I like what Portal Gnome does in terms of it making sense while you have Shadow and while you don't. Great execution. Not sure if I'd want Shadow in a set when the previous set didn't have it. It becomes super-flying and fights for that space. The two sets are likely not going to play well together as both flying creatures and shadow creatures become too good and uninteractive. It IS a fan favorite tho. It's worth trying.
Instant (R)
If target creature is the target of five other spells, you win the game.
Creature - Ogre Rogue (C)
Haste
Skulk
When Ogre Sneak enters the battlefield, you may put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature.
It takes the smarts of an ogre to get the idea to sneak past a dragon. It takes the size of a dragon to miss a sneaking ogre.
4/4
The Mending 3GU
Enchantment - Saga (R)
I, II: Each player may put a permanent card from their hand onto the battlefield with a time counter on it.
III: At the end of turn, exile all permanents with a time counter on them.
2
Mother of Lore W
Creature - Human Cleric (U)
Whenever you cast a historic spell, put a lore counter on Mother of Lore. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)
T, Remove a lore counter from Mother of Lore: Target historic permanent gains hexproof and indestructible until end of turn.
“It’s more than bookkeeping. You watch out for the things you document.”
1/1
3
The Stronghold Citadel 7B
Legendary Artifact (M)
Besiegeable 5 (This enters the battlefield with five brick counters and may be attacked. Damage dealt to this removes that many brick counters. If there are no brick counters on this, put it into it’s owner’s graveyard.)
At the beginning of each upkeep, you may destroy target creature.
[5]
4
Brennet, Scion of Sisay 1GG
Legendary Creature - Human Warrior (U)
Whenever Brennet, Scion of Sisay becomes the target of a spell or ability, it gets +1/+1 until end of turn and must be blocked this turn if able.
Bequest — GW, Exile Brennet, Scion of Sisay from your graveyard: Target creature gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the number of creatures you control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
3/3
5
Remake U
Instant (C)
Move a counter from target permanent onto a second target permanent.
Reinforce 1—1G (1G, Discard this card: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature.)
“Now is the time to make this land into a home for all of us.”
—Tatyova, Benthic Druid
The mechanics were cute for something someone came up with on the fly, but surely some of them should have had some GREAT ideas lying around somewhere like we all do. I think Ari is doing some great designs and is a capable designer. Chris is rather creative, even if he doesn't know what a common is. Jeremy played it so safe last round I almost fell asleep reading the designs. No idea what to think of him now.
There were plenty of legit gameplay reasons to discard those mechanics, one doesn't need to disagree with how interesting they are from a design-perspective.
A narrowed down copy of kicker is still a good mechanic if it plays well and different enough.
But I wonder.. if you take a failed set like Kamigawa, do you get to fix it? Sure, you can't change how Splice onto Arcane works. Or can you go Splice onto Sorcery? Make a Ninja, because they should have been in there? Well, you can't give it Ninjutsu, so that's lame.
The safe bet is probably to take a recent set and show you understood it. Except when you are in a slot where you need to impress the judges.
Jeremy could probably go with Innistrad and make some solid cards and be fine. But Chris needs to go all out, so maybe trying to fix an old set would get him the attention he needs.
Edit: Interesting - http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/174389497068/were-the-contestants-given-the-full-size-art
#2 I guess. Pretty hard to deal with once it happened. Might be problematic. Would probably get points for art match.
#3 Playing into the death theme. Could have expanded to green. I like.
#5 Holy crap that's good. Pushed sea star.
#6 Probably the best slot for that art together with #5. I wonder if the wording works, but that's fun.
#7 Hm. No flying is a big problem here.
#8 I wonder if Johnny would like this. According to what we've seen, this might be a Spike optimization card. Pretty cool board whipe though.
#10 Caring for fights is cool. Neat one.
Notes and thoughts as I read through #4 judgements:
Oh wow, did I not see the face in L. But if I didn't, is it right to design for it?
Funny how Ari made the same mistake as I did and read the black mythic as rare.
I had a similar idea for the red rare as Ari, but didn't go there, thinking it was done before and not innovative enough.
Hah, what Chris designed for the blue Common was exactly what I wanted to design, except I decided it was too complex for common. Also Holy Crap! That's a turtle! I thought it was a mushroom. Oh wow. I designed top-down for mushroom. Seeing how Maro complained it's not turning into a snake I guess he didn't look at the card art either. Lol.
Also love how already two people arrived at 3U 3/3 just like me.
Oh wow. Chris went the same direction I did with the black common. Except his design sucked. Hehe. Go me! Dislike how they didn't like the art for mono-B. I think polling would tell them otherwise.
Love the Kellmoth design!
Why do all people see a Dinosaur in K? It's just a beast. Also they all make tiny dinosaurs. Hello? Dinosaurs are big! Otherwise they're just lizards. Also where does Maro see this as an artifact? It's got plates. Like animals do. Don't need a cyborg for that.
Is grade C the worst she'll give? Because how much worse could this even get than E for a red spell?
Really didn't see Chris continuing. Someone else must have made terrible designs.
Maybe Jeremy should try to get into the creative team. This is kinda weird for a designer.
Aww, she didn't see the sigils. Poor Jeremy.
What even is an Amphin? I never heard that until this challenge.
Ah! Someone else made L into a legendary black creature! I'm not alone!
Nobody understood that revealing the card is meant to induce fear for the coming game
Was it so clear that D is a hellion? I thought it was a wurm.
Oh boy, a D.
I only now realize this challenge is a lot like one of my favorite board games: Mysterium. People really misjudge how general their perception of art is. No two people see the same thing. What's obvious for you is not at all there for the next person. It takes a while until you see what in an art will be recognized by most people.
Welp. Sad to see Ryan go. His mechanic was the best iirc. I think this is a mistake.
Plant tribal! WoooH!
Pfft. Lizard Wizard. Tehee. On that note can we fire Jenna Helland? She might be amazing and what she does and very beneficial to Magic as a whole, but anyone who wants to replace Lizard Wizard with Merfolk Shaman needs to just go away!
Finally! A wurm!
Huh. I was hoping for more exciting designs. Some were pretty great though.
Next challenge is rather overwhelming again. In a way, you can't design good cards, because if those were good, they'd have been in the set. Good luck with that.
That's what I meant. You can just flat out use it as a removal that exiles any non-land permanent. And that's a bend. Apparently.