MTG Cardsmith Community Forums
All-Time Favorite Cards
Hi. For this contest, please pick exactly one card that you think is the best/coolest/most interesting card you've ever created. You can make a new card if you want, but I recommend an old card that you really like.
When I judge contests I tend to look for "lenticular design" (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lenticular-design-2014-12-15) - basically, abilities that are easy to understand but can be used in complex ways.
In general, your submissions should probably be
- simple
- interesting/innovative
- at a roughly fair power level
- flavorful, and
- templated correctly (the phrasing is like a normal Magic card)
in that order of priority. Anyway, any submission is better than nothing. I'll try to provide useful feedback on any card submitted no matter what.
I'll judge no earlier than Friday, May 24, but probably a bit later. I'll look at any card submitted before I judge.
Good luck!
When I judge contests I tend to look for "lenticular design" (https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lenticular-design-2014-12-15) - basically, abilities that are easy to understand but can be used in complex ways.
In general, your submissions should probably be
- simple
- interesting/innovative
- at a roughly fair power level
- flavorful, and
- templated correctly (the phrasing is like a normal Magic card)
in that order of priority. Anyway, any submission is better than nothing. I'll try to provide useful feedback on any card submitted no matter what.
I'll judge no earlier than Friday, May 24, but probably a bit later. I'll look at any card submitted before I judge.
Good luck!
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Here's mine, it was more recent, but some of my older cards aren't the best quality.
Here are all the ways to use this card in order of how often they come up. Just adding the “maze of ith” ability to this effect really increases its modularity at minimal cost to complexity (the flavor helps here). I think this card exhibits lenticular design quite well.
1) deal 3 damage to an opponent’s attacker/blocker
2) “fog” an attacker/blocker with 4+ toughness
3) save one of YOUR attacking/blocking creatures with 4+ toughness from dying in combat
4) untap YOUR attacking/blocking creature with 4+ toughness to reuse a tap ability
However, it is unfortunately too weird and confusing to be any good, so my actual entry is this good lad:
With that out of the way, I'll try to give useful feedback to all Cardsmiths here to help improve your cards and design skills.
Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)
@pjbear2005 - Explore New Territories
This is a very interesting design that is simple yet still has many complex play decisions. Like, do you want to lead with your tapped dual land after all, or do you want to hold on to it for a later turn? Or, do you want to play that last land out of your hand, or wait? These decisions get even more interesting if this card is in your deck, but not your hand. The one reason this card wasn't higher is that I feel like it might be one-mana Divination a lot (ie overpowered) so I might make it a 1U sorcery or something like that. Otherwise, it's a great design.
@HeroKP - Krix, Lifeforger
This card is dripping with Simic flavor. It's an appropriate leader for the mutate deck, and if I opened this out of a booster pack, I would be very excited, which I think is a good way to judge mythic rares like this one. The one piece of feedback I have is that mutate feels a bit like Vannifar on steroids, so it can place an incentive towards combo instead of fun midrange. If I were you, I might change mutate to the Polymorph effect (https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=191380) or some variant of the Pongify effect (https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=129015). I'm not sure, there's a lot of room to explore with mutate.
5. @TenebrisNemo - Archduke's Librarian
This card is really cool, and efficiently allows a player to make sure their hand is nothing but gas - and in black-red at that! This is a perfect card for many Rakdos aggro-type decks that run out of gas quickly, to make sure they don't get mana flooded or mana screwed. We're at the point in this list where there's nothing major, if anything, to change about the card. You could make this mono-red (and modify the body to fit) so it can help with color screw or have more deck options. I'm not 100% sure about that though, and it's definitely a decision that could swing both ways.
4. @Derain2 - The Thought
As soon as I saw the small text on this card, I was ready to skim it and subject this to the back of this list, but it actually makes a really interesting Germ lord. The living weapon Commander/Oathbreaker deck is an interesting one to build, and I would be happy to have this card commanding it. It could also play a Fblthp-like role in Standard to enable Mox Amber, just maybe. As far as feedback, you could change it to a 0/1 and eliminate the second line to make it more streamlined, as all the living weapons affect toughness already and it probably wouldn't have much of an impact. But the counter to that is that lords generally affect P/T and it feels more natural; I don't know for certain.
3. @bnew07 - Unseat
If you've seen my previous challenges (http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/4347/common-challenge#latest, http://forums.mtgcardsmith.com/discussion/4379/story-spotlight-challenge#latest) you would know that I appreciate cards you create, and think they are generally good examples of lenticular design and have broad applications. This card is no exception, and it has many uses that aren't always obvious at first glance. The submission kind of laid out why, so you can just scroll up and read that if you want to know that. If I had to make a change, I'd probably change the name to be even more evocative - I'm thinking like "Knockback Strike"? "Unseat" feels a bit vague to me. However, this is a great design, and it's definitely top-tier and could have gotten 1st place on a different day. Sidenote: if you submitted Rix Maadi Hellhound (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/rix-maadi-hellhound) it would won for sure, though the contest might have been less interesting...
2. @Corwinnn - Abnegation Apprentice
Another fantastic example of lenticular design here. It's also extremely flexible For UU, this is basically half of a Blue Elemental Blast/Hydroblast/Flashfreeze (whatever you prefer), for U this is flashy Merfolk of the Pearl Trident that also can threaten red decks. This is a great defense against red decks of all kinds. Flavorful, interesting, innovative, flexible. As a Divergent fan, I'm sad it's called Abnegation Apprentice and not Erudite Apprentice, though. This could also have gotten 1st in an alternate universe, as it has no flaws of any kind (except the Divergent thing, which isn't really a flaw) that I can think of offhand.
1. @Red_Tower - A Warrior's Rest
This card most definitely fits. The flavor is fantastic and really conveys exactly what it is supposed to, in sort of a hands-on way, if you understand what I mean. I like the enchantments that are basically multiuse sorceries, like this and Disinformation Campaign, and I think they're very interesting. This has a very interesting incentive for gameplay. This is so unique that I can't really compare it to another card, and I love it. I would definitely play this in a few of my decks, and while I'm not sure it could see Standard play, it could definitely see play in casual or EDH, and I'd be excited to play this.
Thanks for submitting these cards; while I procrastinated on it for sure, it was fun to judge, and I hope you find the feedback useful. I'm going to go fave a bunch of submissions now.
Also if any mods are here, please close this contest. (And the Story Spotlight challenge too that I did please, thanks.)
Thanks for the recognition!
I called my card Unseat because that is the term for when you knock an enemy jouster off their horse.
I had a lot of fun entering it and seeing these cards!
Thanks to @Je_Suis_Oluwa for hosting!
I was going for the alliteration when I made the card, btw!