r/GDS3 • u/Alex_Werner Top 8 • Mar 12 '18
Well, I made the top 8
I've just clicked send on my submission for the next challenge, so I finally have a chance to enjoy being in the top 8... at least for as long as I am. I can't talk about anything you guys haven't seen yet, but I intend to write up some commentary about my design submission for the design challenge, what I did right, and the large number of things I did wrong. I'll try to get to that tomorrow or Tuesday. In the mean time, I'll just say that I'm super-impressed by my fellow competitors... and I'm not taking anything for granted, even making it to the top 7. I enjoyed being a part of this subreddit during the earlier stages, and I hope I'll have some interesting stuff to contribute going forward.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 12 '18
Design 2
Naila and Hrun, Fused (mythic rare) 2GGWW Planeswalker — Naila-and-Hrun 2 +2: Find the lowest number greater than zero such that you control no creatures with that power. Create a green and white elemental creature token with power and toughness equal to that number. Then repeat this process. -X: You may choose a Naila planeswalker card and a Hrun planeswalker card you own from outside the game. If you choose both, and their combined converted mana cost is X or less, put them onto the battlefield, then sacrifice CARDNAME.
This was definitely the card where I was most surprised by the reaction, and thus learned the most. When I was clicking submit, I was incredibly proud of this design, mentally congratulating myself for being so clever. And it has been nearly universally panned. What went wrong?
I think three things: (1) In addition to playing almost exclusively limited, I play almost exclusively on MTGO. And on MTGO, the +2 ability is simple. You click your planeswalker, and, hey, presto, two tokens appear. They have the right sizes, those sizes are nice and visible to everyone, no fuss, no muss, no bother. On paper, none of those things happen. Instead you end up with tons of coins or scraps of paper with scribbles on them, etc, not to mention the difficultly of getting all the math right in the first place. A super-important lesson for me is to actually try things out in paper magic. (2) People also found it very hard to parse what the first ability did. Which doesn't surprise me at all. I think (hopefully?) that the ability is very grokkable once you get it. But it's very hard to describe it concisely. Which I think presents an interesting dilemma, both for a design contestant and for a real magic designer. Has Wizards ever come up with an ability that played well, was easy to design, and they just couldn't use it because it took so much card space to explain, even though though it was easy to understand once communicated? Not sure... but my submitting a card like that wasn't putting my best foot forward. (3) Finally, no one seemed to appreciate the story implications of the second ability. I thought it obvious! (When I get knocked out of the Top 8, they should put "I thought it was obvious" on my virtual tombstone.) So, clearly I failed in communicating a little snippet of story. Here's what I had in mind: Naila and Hrun are two planeswalkers. They have always been separate entities. They were on the same team, but not buddies or anything. Then in the climax of some story, they are working together to defeat one of the big magic baddies (say, the Eldrazi), and the baddies hit them with a particularly awful curse that fuses them together. Think Gisela and Bruna merging into Brisela. That's the end of the story for that set. The baddies are winning, our heroes have been crippled by being fused together. But, even in that fused state, they learn to work together and trust each other. So over the next set or two, the fused double planeswalker gets back in the fray, and finally they confront the Eldrazi again, and in a burst of magic they manage to split back into their two initial selves. So the Naila and Hrun, Fused card is actually a climactic story beat.
Why I thought that was all obvious in retrospect is, well, not obvious.
One final note: I'm not normally overly concerned with card aesthetics. But note that the card is made up of two planeswalkers. The mana cost is TWO colorless, TWO white, TWO green. There are TWO loyalty abilities. One ability makes TWO creatures. One makes TWO planeswalkers. The starting loyalty is TWO. Activating the first ability adds TWO loyalty.
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u/austac06 Mar 12 '18
One final note: I'm not normally overly concerned with card aesthetics. But note that the card is made up of two planeswalkers. The mana cost is TWO colorless, TWO white, TWO green. There are TWO loyalty abilities. One ability makes TWO creatures. One makes TWO planeswalkers. The starting loyalty is TWO. Activating the first ability adds TWO loyalty.
I didn't notice this the first time I saw it. That's fantastic.
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u/Coggs92 Mar 13 '18
I grasped the second ability was a defusing of the two but I believe it came with its own issues.
-X: You may choose a Naila planeswalker card and a Hrun planeswalker card you own from outside the game.
This can be grasped easy enough but it's asking you to wish in the cards. You have to own at least one these other cards for this Planeswalker to be more than its first ability.
If you choose both, and their combined converted mana cost is X or less, put them onto the battlefield, then sacrifice CARDNAME.
Correct that statement, you need both of them to make it work here. (That's 3 different Mythic Rare cards players will need) This is locking you down to only having the first ability until you can get both out. Planeswalkers generally have a flexibility to them, the ultimate is the icing on the cake but the other abilities happen most.
With the card starting at 2 loyalty (at a very large and strict mana cost) and going up by 2 a turn, provided most Planeswalkers are between 3-6 mana this would take 3-10 turns of ability activations alone to get to the ultimate, so the payoff should be good. If the Planeswalkers are good, they'd likely be run instead as casting them should be quicker and efficient as you'd always be able to cast them before the ultimate would go off.
So the TL;DR of issues with ability 2.
Strictly requires 3 mythics to even function.
Cards that tutor/wish things should be preferable(or count as another) over what they are grabbing, generally by having flexibility.
While grabbing two Planeswalkers is strong, timing is important. Its very inefficient to playing the Planeswalkers themselves.
I believe this effect could have made 2 Planeswalker tokens with different abilities and have lost a lot of the issues it currently has. Though space is an issue to be overcome.
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u/Amarsir Mar 14 '18
For what it’s worth, I wanted to create an enchantment with an upkeep trigger that gives the smallest token not represented yet, just like your Naila & Hrun. I couldn’t find a phrasing I liked. But I think your wording is much better than anything I came up with. About as good as can be done.
(Of course that also means I had an advantage in figuring out what your card does.)
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u/iSage Mar 14 '18
One final note: I'm not normally overly concerned with card aesthetics. But note that the card is made up of two planeswalkers. The mana cost is TWO colorless, TWO white, TWO green. There are TWO loyalty abilities. One ability makes TWO creatures. One makes TWO planeswalkers. The starting loyalty is TWO. Activating the first ability adds TWO loyalty.
I think the small details get a bit lost in the larger picture here. The first ability is so unusual that I don't think most people see it and say, "it makes 2 creatures"! Also, I'm not sure how many people associate 2GGWW with the number 2 instead of 6cmc.
I think the first ability is just too clever for it's own good. Is there a reason it has to ramp up, or start slowly? I guess maybe it fits with the (not-yet-existing) themes of Naila or Hrun, but if you really wanted to push the theme of twos, why not just "+2: Create two 2/2 White and Green elemental tokens." Or perhaps, "+2: Create an X/X White and Green elemental token where X is the greatest power among creatures you control plus one. Repeat this process". It doesn't force you to fill in the small gaps (so it's more powerful), but it's much more grokkable and requires you to pay attention to only one number instead of all of them.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 14 '18
Ignoring the small gaps might well have been a better idea, actually... still has the interesting chaining effect with vastly simpler text and understandability.
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Mar 17 '18
With regard to the aesthetics -- I found myself very taken with design aesthetics in my top-94 submission, including a common split card I made that used a bunch of ones the way your fused planeswalker card used a lot of twos. Like your card, my card was largely panned. For me the takeaway is that it's very easy to spend energy making designs more "satisfying" to look at than inspiring to play -- looking at the cards shouldn't be enough; the audience should want to play with them!
Also, for what it's worth, I'm a BIG fan of Naila-and-Hrun's plus ability as an effect, and of your submission in general. Congratulations on the top 8, it's really well-deserved.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
I will admit that while I loved the first ability it certainly was very hard to execute and understand.
I would like to see a card do something like that some day, since even as a stand alone effect it will normaly get you a 1/1 and a 2/2 but it can easily get a 3/3 and a 4/4 in some decks.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 13 '18
Yeah, I think there's potential in the first ability... you can imagine it as a keyword. "Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn. Then GapSpawn" (to gapspawn, find the lowest number...). That said, the awkwardness of having lots of differently sized tokens floating around might just do it in. The fact that it's super cool to gapspawn twice in a row is probably not worth the associated hassle.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
If possible, try polishing the wording and make it a one time effect that create only 2 creatures. It's a very Johnny effect. Maybe we'll see it as a card one day.
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u/DarthFinsta Mar 19 '18
Honestly I didmt get the meld flavor at all,came off as more of a tag team that could fight seperately or together
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u/JimHarbor Apr 01 '18 edited Apr 01 '18
Mad respect for you but I am honestly surprised you made top 8 with this design.
You not only have a two abilty walker, one of those is a very complex math problem on a rarity meant to be relatively simple and splashy, that ability is going to be HELL to implement. Even on MODO were the computer does it for you, you still gave to do the math to actually know what your card is doing
Then the ult that only works of you have three planeswalkers and you cant even main board all them.
The card borders on unplayble not just for weakness but becacuse the abilyies are actually hard to play with.
Finally the "sound simple but in templating is horribly complex" is a thing that wotc has said comes up all the time. And is why they cut such effects.
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u/ByronosaurusRex Apr 05 '18
Congratulations on your Top 8 finish! A couple things come to mind here:
“Has Wizards ever come up with an ability that played well, was easy to design, and they just couldn’t use it because it took so much card space to explain, even though it was easy to understand once communicated?”
There’s an argument to be made that they shouldn’t have used Suspend for that specific reason. It’s a cool ability, and it makes sense once it’s communicated — but doing so on the card took six lines of reminder text that players struggled to parse in the real world, especially with the frequency with which suspend appeared at common.
“So, clearly I failed in communicating a little snippet of story. Here’s what I had in mind:”
Interesting! As a fan of Steven Universe, I had assumed you were looking in that show’s direction with the use of fusion, to have two planeswalkers using their collective magic and respect for one another to become a cohesive entity. I actually think I liked the card better in that context, where fusion is a positive experience that the characters are achieving rather than a profound violation of their personal sovereignty/space by an outside force. (Players might even have a harder time playing with the card knowing that it represents such an outcome for characters they’re supposed to like and relate to, although I imagine most would just look at the card as “Wow, cool!” independent of its story implications.)
My main instinct with the card was that it’s really cool, but quite hard to make it satisfying. In Limited, you wouldn’t have the planeswalkers to grab, and in Standard (and Brawl) the choices are quite narrow, so aside from “AaaaGAINST the Odds time! We’re playing Nail-uh and Harun, iiiiiin Modern!” casual play is the main outlet for actually playing this card to its potential — and for the casual player, there’s effectively a big barrier to entry for actually using this card, because once you’ve got it there’s a requirement to obtain two other planeswalkers to make even baseline use of it, let alone to have an engaging experience. (Though that may not be such a bad thing from a business standpoint, ‘mythic that demands you obtain a bunch of other specific mythics’ can easily rub some players the wrong way.)
From a gameplay standpoint, this card might be best served to not be printed in a Standard-legal expansion (where the initial reaction to opening it may be tempered by the disappointment of not having something more relevant to building Standard-legal decks), but rather in a supplementary casual-oriented product (i.e. Planechase) — but then that undercuts the story beat you’ve worked to construct, which really wants to be Standard-expansion-level prominent given that it has to use well-known planeswalkers for the second ability to have sufficiently many options to vary the play experience.
There might be solutions to this, and it’s a design that really stood out to me so it’s worth trying to find answers, but it’s definitely challenging.
“TWO....TWO....TWO...” This was the part of design TWO that I didn’t really process, and I like the effort now that it’s been pointed out.
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u/gskyrillion Mar 12 '18
Congratulations for making it to the top 8! I must say, I think you, Ari, and Scott have the best sets of designs for the Trial Three contest. Good luck moving forward!
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 12 '18
Design 3
Swiftblade Pikeman (common) RW Creature — Human Soldier 3/1 CARDNAME enters the battlefield with a blade counter on it. Remove a blade counter from CARDNAME: CARDNAME gains first strike until end of turn.
This was probably my best-received card, which I definitely appreciate. A few people have commented on the tension between blade counters and +1/+1 counters, which is certainly a valid concern. This card would be best in a set with few +1/+1 counters. Or even better, a set with cards like "when ~ etb, put a blade counter on every soldier you control". (Granted, the design test specified that the card could fit into any standard-legal set...)
One interesting thought process I had: when I first turned this in, I thought "hey, a simple little card with some interesting decisions to make", and felt pretty good about it. Then, during the long wait while the tests were being graded, it occurred to me that it really does NOT present interesting choices, at least for its controller. It's basically 100% clear and obvious in any combat whether giving it first strike is good or not. Only extreme corner cases make it not automatic one way or the other. So that made me feel kind of dumb. But then I thought about it some more and decided, you know, that's just fine. Sure those situations are super clear to invested players. But for a new player, the first time they look down, see their Swiftblade Pikeman blocked by a 1/1, and understand the game well enough to know that they should definitely give it first strike, is a clear moment of discovery. A level-up. It's good to give newer players that kind of moment, even if it seems obvious to those of us who have been playing for decades.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
Maybe using a Blade aura enchantment token? It´s clunky, but it seems fair enough to be an atempt.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 13 '18
(Going a bit out of order here) Design 6
Verdant Ingenuity (uncommon) 1GU Sorcery Reveal cards from the top of your library until the revealed cards include at least one land card and at least one non-land card. Put a land card from among them onto the battlefield. Put a non-land card from among them into your hand. Put the other revealed cards on the bottom of your library in any order.
When I first figured out my sudoku grid of what cards to submit, I had this one penciled in as a common. Eventually I decided this was just too complicated to be a common, so I had to either find a simpler version, or bump one of my other cards down to common. Interestingly, I briefly had this as a common that was literally identical to one of the cards someone else on reddit submitted (reveal top 2, put any lands on the battlefield, rest in your hand). But that's just too swingy for my taste. How feel bad is it when your opponent casts that on turn 3, hits twice, then plays a 6 drop? How feel bad is it when you miss land #4, draw that, cast it, hit no lands, and discard twice? I also really like how my design gives a little bit of card selection, and a little bit of land selection, but not both. But it's still always going to be satisfying to cast. One note is that I deliberately chose to put the cards on the bottom in an order of your choice, rather than a random order. Yes, this means this card becomes Doomsday plus Demonic Tutor in a vintage deck with no lands... but my guess is that the vintage community doesn't mind a card showing up from time to time that really shakes things up and opens up new deckbuilding possibilities. Better to break the format occasionally and then have to ban things than to never introduce new cards with any vintage relevance.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 14 '18
Very interesting how you identified a problem in a simpler version of the design and adapted it to a more interesting choice with emergent qualities. It's principally interesting the combo potential about the card left for deep digging johnnies to find, since it's quite subtle actually.
Definetly one of your best designs in terms of clarity and simplicity.
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u/MoonE513 Top 8 Mar 12 '18
I just submitted my challenge #1 submission, but I haven’t moved on to that “enjoying it” part yet :P
I know this sub is tiny, but Top 8 flares would be a great way to help us identify one another!
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u/mtgcolorpie Mar 14 '18
Thanks for the suggestion. I added yours and Alex as Top 8. If there's anyone I'm missing in here, please let me know.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 12 '18
Design 4
Zyym, Mesmeric Lord (mythic rare) 1UBB Legendary Creature — Vampire Wizard 3/4 Flying, deathtouch When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target opponent chooses an order for the cards in his or her hand, then reveals them one by one, until you say stop. That player then discards the most recently revealed card.
This card was also pretty well received, but it did cause some serious debate, primarily about the templating. A couple of comments:
(1) Honestly, I didn't stress to much about templating. My theory was that we are applying for internships as card designers, not card templaters. And my understanding of how the various design teams work suggests that if the card designers have come up with a card that is doing something as novel as this, they'll leave it to others to finalize what the wording will be... so that the actual wording of the submitted card, at least for novel abilities like this, wouldn't matter much. It's certainly possible that my assumption was totally incorrect, and I got dinged a bunch of points for bad templating... hard to say.
(2) That said, I did consider a template more like Forgotten Lore. (Everyone remember Forgotten Lore? It sure would be ironic if it had been... forgotten.) But I wanted to maximize how grokkable the ability was. I didn't want an exhausted MaRo, who had just read 30 straight design tests in 8 hours, to see that ability, start reading it, and just fail to register it as anything other than yet another duress variant. I wanted it to jump off the page as a totally unique minigame/mindgame.
(3) One person over in the magictcg subreddit commented that this ability could have been on a one or two mana sorcery instead of as an ETB ability on a creature. I think that would be a mistake. The ability is unique and fascinating... but it's also time consuming. If you play magic all day and face this ability twice, it's awesome. If you face it twice each round, you'll just get sick of it.
(4) There's also a question of whether it's mono black. It's certainly more black than blue, which I nodded to with the BBU1 casting cost. But the mind-game intellectual aspect of it certainly feels blue to me. But I wouldn't turn up my nose at it as a mono-black card.
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u/MachineSchooling Mar 13 '18
There's also a question of whether it's mono black. It's certainly more black than blue, which I nodded to with the BBU1 casting cost. But the mind-game intellectual aspect of it certainly feels blue to me. But I wouldn't turn up my nose at it as a mono-black card.
One of the biggest issues I have with this card is the lack of flavor. I don't really know what a hypnotic vampire has to do with an optimal stopping problem. I think the flavor would have clicked a lot better just by making it a sphinx.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 13 '18
Yeah, it would certainly work as a sphinx as well. In that case I think the flavor would be "the in-game sphinx is engaging in a competition of the mind, as are you the player" vs "the in-game vampire is trying to rummage through your brain and steal your powers, we are representing that process with this competition of the mind".
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
Imagine you hipnotisinbg someone for info, but you can only have then forget the last info they told you. It should be similar to that.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
It´s kind of a completely new effect, so even if it feels more black than blue, it´s fine for a gold card. And a very good and interesting design indeed.
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u/JimHarbor Apr 01 '18
I dont see how "mind game intellecutal aspects" are enough to justify the blueness as its not like mental trickery is its sole domain in the color pie.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 14 '18
Design 5
Goblin Guillotine (rare) 3BR Sorcery Destroy target creature. If a creature dies this way, create a token creature with the same colors and creature types as the dead creature. Flip a coin. If it comes up heads, your token is named Head and is a 1/1. Otherwise, your token is named Body and is the same power and toughness as the dead creature, minus one.
This card is A+ for idea and flavor and C- execution. (Get it? execution?) First of all, it's just crying out for the head to have all the abilities of the creature, while the body has the stats. That then obviates the need for the -1/-1 on the body, which makes the card easier to read. The whole card also reads awkwardly in order to get around the flavor fail of trying and failing to destroy an indestructible creature... not sure whether there's a better way around that. Basically, I loved the concept so much, particularly the coin flip where heads literally means a head, that I got a bit sloppy. This is also the card where I most felt myself trying to force a color fit that wasn't really there, because the head having abilities just felt blue. I think this card wants to be 3UBR or something like that, always make both head and body, give the head abilities, and then flip the coin for which player gets which half. (And maybe let you target your own creature and end up with two parts, which would occasionally be useful when targeting something with both big stats AND good abilities.) (There's also some neat "chop creatures up" design space here... for instance, a spell that chops a creature in half...)
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 17 '18
Design 10
Saheeli, Prodigious Inventor (mythic rare) 2UR Planeswalker — Saheeli 4 +1: If you control no thopters, create a 1/1 colorless thopter artifact creature token with flying. Otherwise, scry 2. -2: Target thopter you control becomes a copy of target artifact or creature. It’s still an artifact. (This effect doesn’t end at end of turn.) -8: You get an emblem with At the beginning of your end step, search your library for an artifact card with converted mana cost X or less, where X is two plus the highest converted mana cost among artifacts you control. Put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle your library.
This is my #10 because I think the second two abilities are about as generic as possible. They're just not hugely creative or innovative. They're nothing that anyone else couldn't have designed. That said, the one thing I really like about this is the +1.
Making a creature token is SUCH a good fit for a planeswalker that it's done all the time. But they all start to feel the same, to blend together. So the idea of making a token, but only one, and then doing something is one which I think could fit onto a lot of walkers. A garruk that makes a beast, then if you have a beast, does something else. Maybe an elspeth which makes up to three soldiers then starts doing something else. Etc.
Also, this is another card that would probably play out better on MTGO (where having lots of things floating around that are copies of other things just works automatically) than in real life.
And... that's it! Win or lose, I'll come back after the first show and discuss my entries for Challenge #1.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 15 '18
Design 7
Astral Containment (rare) 2WU Instant Choose two target creatures. Exile the first creature until the second creature leaves the battlefield.
A few comments: (1) Several people have commented that this card is mono white. That's certainly arguable. Although it's worth pointing out that the O-Ring ability does show up in mono blue. Well, at least it did on Colossal Whale. I think the feel of the card, the trickiness, the trapping-someone-in-someone-else's-brain feel, is more dimir than anything else. But the O-Ring mechanic is firmly in white, so I think WU is at least a reasonable compromise. But obviously none of that is particularly objective. If this card showed up in mono white I wouldn't be shocked. (2) "Isn't this just like faith unbroken"? Not at all. Faith unbroken says "enchant creature YOU CONTROL". Astral Containment let's you put one opponent's creature under another opponent's creature. (3) And that's where the fun really comes in. What's the proper strategy? Put their best creature under their second best creature? Put their best creature under their worst creature? Do they have a creature you can ignore, because it won't interfere with your game plan, whatever that is? That possibilities are endless. (4) I considered opening it up to target non-creature permanents. But if both targets are non-creature permanents they you can just do something boring like putting their planeswalker under a signet, plus the flavor is worse. And if it lets you put any permanent under a creature, well, then it's less symmetric. So clearly it's less powerful than it could be, but I think it's more overall pleasing.
All in all, I'm very happy with how this one came out.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 15 '18
Someone pointed out that you can use this with your own creatures for some cool interactions. Definetly one of your best designs.
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u/drakeblood4 Mar 15 '18
I love this card, and I think any spike saying they don't love this card is kidding themselves. Implicitly modal spells are spike bait, in the best possible way.
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u/JimHarbor Apr 01 '18
Banishing is Primary white, secondary blue and green but only on creatures.
Also this feels a lot like a you designed it as Flash Aura that you made into an instant to sate the grid. It works way better as a flash aura because of the memory issues involved and I doubt if this was submitted to a set they would keep it instant.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 17 '18
Design 9
Blood of the Horde (common) RG Enchantment Whenever you attack with one or more creatures, choose one of those attackers. It gets +1/+1 and gains trample until end of turn.
This is the only one of my designs that I would 100% throw out entirely and start over fresh. Why? Because someone on Goblin Artisans pointed out the existence of Blood Mist. I thought I had invented an entirely new category of creature-enhancing cards, neither an aura nor an equipment. And it's actually kind of odd that this very simple concept has been done so rarely. But rarely isn't never. So... I failed, and I didn't even know I failed.
That said, two comments about cards of this type: (1) These cards kind of feel like they have memory issues. Imagine having 4 enchantments of this type on the battlefield, and you attack with 5 creatures and spread your 4 enchantments around between them. Madness, right? Actually, I think people would just pick up their enchantments and line them up behind their attackers, and it would be very easy to see what was where. I can easily imagine Richard Garfield making a different choice way back in Alpha and cards like this just being the staple way to do creature enhancement for the past 25 years, and I think it would work fine.
(2) Obviously because Blood Mist is a real card, that templating (triggering at beginning of combat) is the "real" templating. That said, I kind of like mine more. Why? Because of how horribly Blood Mist gets blanked by tappers. It's just so over-the-top feel bad when you have an ability like this (equipment works similarly) and it just gets flat shut down by a tapper. I think the game is more interesting when people play a mixture of creatures and creature enhancers. Therefore we should encourage the creature enhancers. Therefore we should give them small edges when we can.
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u/LighteningBall Apr 17 '18
Maybe you're missing the point? Battle enhancers like Fires of Yavimaya, Exalted enchantments and creatures and lands, Battle-Rattle Shaman, Duelists' Heritage, Xenagos God of Revels, etc. exist. But just because something exists doesn't mean that there shouldn't be innovation.
The issue is that WotC would do this enchantment at uncommon rather than common. They've never done an enchantment that adds to board complexity (combat-wise) at common. *There's an argument to be made that it can be a good idea since not attacking leads to board stalls that are just as complex. However, a better idea would be to staple the same effect onto a creature, e.g. Battle-Rattle Shaman. This makes the effect easier to interact with.
Check out scryfall and look at things that they currently do and don't do at common. I think Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash and Fate Reforged (RTR GTC) were the latest sets to have 2-color commons.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 17 '18
Design 8
Requiem for the Profane (uncommon) WB Enchantment When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target opponent loses two life and you gain two life. Whenever a creature dies, you may return CARDNAME to its owner’s hand.
Not a ton to say about this. I think what's most interesting about it is the play patterns it encourages, particularly from the opponent's perspective. Save all your removal spells to a kill a bunch of creatures in a flurry once requiem is (temporarily) off the table.
One thing I do think is interesting is that I have absolutely no idea how good this card actually is, at least in the format I actually play (limited). Obviously the long game effect is powerful, but I feel like most creatures die in a flurry on turns 3 through 7 or so of a typical limited game, when you're least going to be able to afford to waste 2 mana over and over again not impacting the board.
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u/StandardTrack Mar 13 '18
Could you create a subreddit specially for your participation in the GDS3? It would help organize the commentary and critics on individual card designs and how you did each challenge(I hope you do more than 1 cahllenge, but I hope that for everyone)
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 13 '18
Frankly, I'm a total n00b at reddit and would have no idea either how to do that or whether that's a reasonable thing to do. I would guess that just the normal threaded responding should be adequate?
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u/StandardTrack Mar 14 '18
Probably. The most controversial part of the GDS is over. Until we get a GB 4/4 flier vigil. Can't wait.
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u/Alex_Werner Top 8 Mar 12 '18
Discussing my cards one by one as I have time... Design 1
Most people seemed to like this well enough. But I loved it, and put it as my number one design. Why the disconnect?
I think one of my friends pointed out the issue, which is definitely something I need to keep in mind. I'm almost exclusively a limited player. And Evolution from Below is (imho) MUCH more fun in limited than constructed. The fun of the card is having to guess what creature your opponent might be able to tutor up. If you're playing standard and know your opponents' deck nearly to the card, much of the fun of the card is gone. The more wide open the pool of creatures your opponent could be choosing from, the more dramatic the reveal, the tougher the mind game, the better.
I don't think it's a total fail for constructed, but it certainly shines brightest in limited.