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Custom-Start: An experimental challenge
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Umm, so if we use that ruleset...
It technically won't be monday in Alofi, Niue for another 14 hours.
I have completed all of my submissions except one, but it is really late where I live, and I cannot keep my eyes open.
Would it be abusing your kindness if I got some sleep first, and then finished up my thing?
#1: Golgari Explorer (Common, satisfies requirement for Black and Green, and Design Requirement 2, "A card that makes you search your library for a land card")
For this one, I tried to make a form of land-searching that fit into the graveyard mechanics that the Golgari always use. You can either use the second ability to simply grab the land you dumped when the Explorer came out, or to recur a more powerful land that was destroyed or used up earlier. For the flavor, it represents the Golgari delving into the deepest reaches of Ravnica's vast underground catacombs.
#2: Azorius Courthouse (Uncommon, satisfies requirement for White and Blue, and Design Requirement 1, "A land card")
(Just realized that I forgot to put the artist. The artist for this one is Richard Wright.)
#3: Rubblebelt Rising (Rare, satisfies requirement for Red and Green (again), and Design Requirement #3, "A card that transforms a land into a creature")
With this one, I thought showing the Gruul animating the Rubblebelt section of Ravnica (one of the few parts of Ravnica that's still covered in wilderness) would be interesting. The card itself is mostly a modified Sylvan Awakening. The base p/t is smaller, and it's only your Forests and Mountains, but with a large enough board your animated lands could become extremely threatening. They also have trample rather than reach. I left it at the same CMC though, because it's only Forests and Mountains, and without a big board they can't do as much.
#4: Guildpact Monstrosity (Mythic, satisfies requirement for all colors, and the Design Requirement that it has to deal with lands)
For my mythic, I wanted to go big and use all the colors, as I feel like a Ravnica pack where all 5 colors are required wouldn't be complete without it. The ability itself can let you cheat out some pretty big stuff and give you some big turns, but the card is only cheated out for a turn and the Monstrosity is 5 colors, so I feel like it balances out. My main inspiration for this ability was wanting to have something that cared about what colors the lands you play produced, because I don't think that's been done before so it was something new and interesting to do with lands.
So there you have it, that's my entry!
*WHEEZE* done!
Midnight Strokes + Esper Flavour Pack, GO!!!
(Midnight Strokes == Everything must be double faced)Challenge #1: Make a Werewolf Creature.
(Artifact counters turn things into artifacts, much like flying counters make things fly)
Challenge #2: Make a Noncreature Card.
(Probably broken but hey)
Challenge #3: Make a Card where the two faces do not share a colour.
Challenge #4: Make a fourth card.
THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED FOR JUDGING!
Card that makes a token:
Card that gains you life:
Card that draws you cards:
Mythic Rare:
Right below, I have compiled the overall feedback for everyone's entry and I also have assigned a rank to each entry based on the MTG arena rank system:
Here are the reviews in order of submission, followed by their rankings:
TerryTags - Eat your Veggies # 18 (BRG Elves and Goblins)
The fact that you pushed the Gilt-Leaf flavour really enhanced this entry and brought an unexpected cohesiveness between the Food and Elves theme, I think that was a great choice on your part. Mechanic wise, the cards do the job well enough — you successfully satisfied all restrictions without stumbling once — though there are some dubious details here and there that decrease the realism of the cards. In particular, there are unnecessary hybrid manas a bit everywhere and the balance is sometimes slightly off. Still, it’s a very nice entry, and it’s highlighted by the effort you put into the flavour texts and other creative elements that hold it together!CassZero - Everything Shiny #01 (WUG the Bant shard of Alara)
The Bant flavour is really strong in this entry, you did an amazing job at researching the lore of the shard and using names from famous characters to make it feel like the cards belong there. Mechanically, the themes were also squarely in Bant territory. All the cards feel rare and Mythic and you were not afraid of taking some risks, which made for some really interesting designs, so the restrictions are perfectly satisfied. There are a few details here and there that I think could be improved, but in my opinion it was a really solid entry!shadow123 - Technician #25 (BRG the plane of Kamigawa)
I found it was a solid entry with a strong flavour and well-balanced creatures. All the cards could pass for real cards without too much trouble, though it is partially due to the fact that they are pretty tame mechanically and don’t push for anything too daring or new. With all four cards being Human Samurai creatures with deathtouch, three of which are 3/3s, a bit of variety might have been beneficial to give the overall entry some more spice and kick. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the strong work on the flavour of the corrupted samurais, it really adds additional value to the entry as a whole and conveys a well-executed concept.
LordTachanka123 - Ruthless #14 (BRG the plane of Innistrad)
I found the entry to be a bit uneven. I really enjoyed your lower rarity cards which were realistic enough and were exploring some pretty ruthless themes, but I think the higher rarity cards went a bit overboard though I could see there were some interesting concepts. On the flavour side, both the ruthless and Innistrad themes were there and nicely weaved together.East2West - Mastermind #34 (URG Dreams and Nightmares)
You got one of the most difficult flavour themes and I really liked the overall feel of this entry, it created a cohesive sense of what dream cards would look like. I found some of the concepts pretty interesting and original, though most cards were a bit unbalanced, in my opinion. For me, the big highlight was Aesop, which I really enjoyed mechanically as well as flavourfully and is one of my favourite cards from the contest!
fire12 - Mystical Arts #22 (WUB the Sky)
The storm flavour brought a lot of cohesiveness to the entry, which felt very nice! The main concern I had while reading these cards was that most of them were too powerful, or on the verge of being too powerful. I saw some nice concepts and I think that toning down some of the less necessary stuff would help focus the designs on what is cool about each of them.joemamajoe - Smoke and Mirrors #05 (WBR Vampires)
You got one of the most complicated design packs and I think that you did well overall. Your entries were original and believable as Vampire cards. I do think you stumbled a bit on how you distributed the rarities and I believe there are some questionable choices in the balancing of each individual card, but overall I liked a lot of these concepts.
Potato13 - Rainbow #33 (WBR Angels and Demons)
There were some pretty technical restrictions in that design pack and I think you were pretty successful at meeting them. It was mechanically pretty diversified though there were no super original concepts either. Overall, it was a solid entry with only a few minor issues.bnew07 - Knows-It-All #29 (UBR Dragons)
I found a lot of the cards in this entry to be super elegant and clever. The dragon flavour was tying everything nicely, but it’s really the mechanical aspect that was the highlight for me. Many cards did very original things while using simple variations of well-known effects, which I really enjoyed overall.
Arceus8523 - Good Fortune #32 (UBR Vikings)
The work of research you did on the MTG lore to make the entry fit the Vikings theme in a cohesive manner is absolutely remarkable. Mechanically, you had one of the most difficult design packs but you passed with flying colours in this area too. It’s a daring entry full of originality, strong concepts, and a healthy philosophy of randomness. To top it all, it even manages to remain balanced despite how difficult it is to cost random effects.Faiths_Guide - Smiles and Poisons #30 (WUR the plane of Kaladesh)
I really enjoyed the general elegance of this entry, I don’t always agree with all the little details in each design but I found that every card had a great concept. It’s a very difficult theme and you really went for the daring, most interesting design space. This made for a super entertaining read, all tied up nicely by the strong Kaladesh flavour.Aggroman15 - Territorial Ground #36 (5C the plane of Ravnica)
This entry is oozing with great mechanical flavour, the cards tell a story through what they do that perfectly ties to the flavour of the plane and guilds themselves. I found many of these cards to be very elegant, the balance is realistic, and there are some super original and exciting concepts in there as well.HeroKP - Midnight Strokes #04 (WUB the Esper shard of Alara)
I really enjoyed all the original ways of transforming the cards, you created several mini-games that look like a lot of fun. You had twice as much work as everyone else and you still managed to create some really interesting and fleshed out concepts, I was really impressed to see that all of the cards even had flavour text on both sides. I think there were some questionable choices balance wise, but the concepts were very original and entertaining, which is what really matters.IzItTru - Raining Riches #27 (WRG fairy tales)
The cards were really telling a fairy tale through their effects, which was great. I especially liked how elegantly some of the abilities synergised with each other; overall the entry was full of clever designs. It could have used a bit of polish though, there were a lot of typos, grammar errors and questionable templating, which made the cards a bit hard to read.______
And now, for the TOP 3:
— THIRD PLACE —
@Arceus8523 — You took a lot of risks with this entry, which I guess was suiting considering you got the randomness theme x) Each card gave me a strong reaction as it was usually super interesting, but most of them probably had some serious issues as well — both your higher rarity cards probably can't be printed as-is, which is why you get the third place ^^
— SECOND PLACE —
@Aggroman15 — I am really fond of your common and mythic, I think they both have great concepts for their respective rarity. I think your uncommon and rare had some balancing and/or complexity issues but I found that both still offered interesting concepts and weren't that far from looking realistic, which is why you get the second place
— FIRST PLACE —
@bnew07 — I think all three of your cards were proposing something original and elegant in their own way. While there are a couple things I would change, overall the excitement factor of those concepts just outweigh those bemols by a lot, which is why you get the first place =D
______
Thank you everyone, it was a really fun challenge to judge and I wasn't expecting it to get so many entries considering how complex and difficult it was!
For the prizes, here's how it will go:
Again, thank you everyone for participating! I actually got a little overwhelmed with the number of participants so I was sad that I couldn't allow people to play multiple times. I hope I can improve it and revisit the concept for this challenge one day with many more themes and, ideally, a way for people to get random packs without having to wait for me to send them their packs. It was definitely a very successful experiment, I feel like we pushed the limits of what a contest on the site can do, so thanks everyone!
Thanks for doing an incredible job hosting another amazing contest, @ningyounk!
Could you fave whichever one of the four cards I entered that you liked most?
(P.S. The reason that I changed the wording from "At the beginning of your end step" to "At the beginning of the next turn's end step" on Infiltrating Saboteur is because I didn't want his ability to go off every turn against an opponent that might not have the means to remove him very often. It felt like that could be too oppressive--especially if the person casting him is playing blue-white control or similar.)
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/arresters-intuition?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/sacrosanctity-1?list=user
thanks a lot, this was an awesome contest that you hosted extremely well!
Fave any five cards you want
Also real happy that my first two cards weren't that bad! And that I didn't get a rock bottom...
@ningyounk Thanks for the feedback! This was a wonderful contest that I loved participating in. This was an amazing contest that I’d love to do again. Thanks for the contest!
Challenge very well designed and very well applied.
If you authorize, I would like to use your evaluation mode in future challenges (in arena rank style.)
You can favorite that card.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/aeryn-fervent-knight?list=set&set=54371
Congratulations to all participants.
I favourited Exhilarated Thief, I just really like the symmetric aspect of the mayhem it's creating, and the fun mini-game that goes along with how it's easy to remove... except if someone accidentally discard an artifact xD
I totally agree that "At the beginning of your end step, destroy all other creatures" would have been way too much because of how it would repeats every turn. I still think it should have been "At the beginning of your end step, destroy all creatures" and remove itself with the rest because it opens so much interesting interactions. For instance, you can make it a big 3/1 so when it attacks on the next turn, it's a pain to block because you don't want it to die, but it you suspect the opponent can remove it, you should as well.
@Arceus8523
Favourited! I really like Sacrosanctity, it's very original ^^ Probably should be at least 6-mana though, if Nissa has taught us anything about mana multipliers xD
bnew07
I favourited the four cards of your entry and I favourited your Crystalline Insight, I really like the variation over the Light Up the Stage staple in a way that fits the red noncreature theme super well ^^
shadow123
I did think that the vertical cycle enhanced the flavour aspect of your entry, it gave it a very strong identity and that was pretty nice. It's more on the mechanical aspect, it made the overall entry feel less exciting, for me, there's nothing wrong with this entry really, just that it proposed fewer interesting stuff than other more varied entries.
@CassZero
Favourited!
Of course, use the ranking as much as you want ^^ You can easily find the little MTG Arena icons online, or if you want to re-use the same little icons I did with the name next to it, here's the Bronze one that I didn't end up using:
This was the most fun I had making magic cards I have had in... a while. Completely rekindled my (formerly) fading interest in the hobby. Will message with the card to like soon.
Congratulations to all participants!
Oh, ya that could be interesting for the saboteur. Thanks!
I favourited Golgari Explorer, Guildpact Monstrosity, and Rubblebelt Rising =D
Do you think you'll be doing a challenge like this again sometime in the future.
Might wanna join anonymously and see how well I can actually do at a unique challenge like this.
The challenge was surprisingly popular so I think I'll try my hand at it again, yes ^^ But not in the near future as I'm going to be very busy in the upcoming month. Next time I do it, I'll make sure to do a proper 2-weeks challenge and prepare many more packs than I had initially, so everyone can enter and play multiple times if they'd like ^^
Y E S .