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The Kamigawa Challenge
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https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/renegade-overclocker
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/kanshu-the-soul-cage
Entry one for the Vehicle category
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/blade-of-the-two-realms
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/soulthirst-katana
First entry for the Samurai and Warriors category
Here are the numbers we currently have for each category!
Category 1: Ninjas - 11
Category 2: Samurai - 5
Category 3: Modified - 9
Category 4: Reconfigure - 4
Category 5: Vehicles - 5
Category 6: Artifacts and Enchantments - 6
Category 7: Channel - 6
Category 8: Old School - 9
As you can see we have far more entries for some categories than others! There’s nothing stopping you from creating more ninjas, modified cards and old school cards, but I would love to see some more cards for the less represented categories such as reconfigure, samurai, and vehicles!
https://www.mtgcardsmith.com/view/spiritual-sundering
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/imperial-drone
It's a play on Sensei Golden-Tail for Pilots.
Category 1 - Ninjas
1st Place - Futurist Reinforcement by @LyndonF
I love the simple elegance of this card. It gives a nice benefit for creatures that you've ninjutsued in, as well as a useful trigger when the Reinforcement itself hits an opponent. Overall a fantastic entry! You get a follow, 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Master of Disguise by @Jadefire
This card is a great ninja enabler in multiple ways, both reducing the cost of ninjutsuing your creatures out, but also being very difficult to block, making it easier for your ninjas to get in. I also love the third ability, as it encourages interesting play patterns like ninjutsuing multiple times on a single unblocked creature to get ninjutsu etb effects and things like that. Great card! You get a follow, 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Skinshift Infiltrator by @hileandr
Category 2 - Samurai
1st Place - Nour Zaelle, Defiler of Minds by @Revan
This is a super cool buildaround card, with the potential to just win games outright. I do enjoy the fact that he doesn't have a built-in sac outlet, so you do have to have supporting pieces to win the game with him. Overall I loved the design and the abilities were really well-made! You get 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Guide Through the City by @SpellPiper2213
This is a really neat card, because sometimes you've got all these cool attacking alone effects but are unable to meaningfully get through with a singular creature. While this doesn't stop your opponents from killing your creature through combat damage, it at least ensures that your pumped-up samurai can deal their damage. I also enjoy that this is a non-red or white Samurai card that still makes total mechanical sense. Great entry! You get a follow, 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Back-Alley Guardian by @Revan
This is in kind of the same category as the previous entry, in that it provides security for your lone attacking samurai. This one is also interesting in that it synergizes with both samurai and ninja with the unblockable and the leaves the battlefield trigger. It's a great design, but I feel it could be a bit too powerful, which is why I only gave it third. I still quite enjoy the design, though! You get a follow, 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
Category 3 - Modified
1st Place - Ostentatious Parade by @SpellPiper2213 ;
This is a really fun modal spell that synergizes heavily with modified. I love all of the modes on this, you can use it as removal, lifegain, or a way to modify your creatures. I feel like the lifegain option on this will probably be the least used mode, but it might let you survive in a pinch. The sheer versatility of this card means that it will rarely do nothing, which I like about it. A fantastic entry! You get a follow, 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Miruko, the Shadow Hand by @Castiel_Demiurge ;
This is very interesting, as it's a modified card that's in neither of the primary modified colors. However, it's a really cool design, and I feel like the abilities really compliment each other well. It gives great benefits to your modified creatures that are still perfectly in-pie. Overall a great entry! You get a follow, 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Shigeru, Forge’s Flame by @Jadefire
The ability to make all of your auras and equipments into umbras is super cool, and the first ability is also a really interesting benefit to give to your modified creatures. One of the worst parts about having a huge modified creature is that it just dies to removal, and this helps to fix that problem. Super cool card! You get a follow, 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.Category 4 - Reconfigure
1st Place - Soulthirst Katana by @hileandr
I really enjoy the simple but powerful effect this gives. It essentially makes any of your creatures into a kill spell, at the cost of your own board presence. The fact that it's repeatable makes it very powerful, and yet balanced as well. Fantastic entry! You get a follow, 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Kanshu, the Soul Cage by @hileandr
This card has a super interesting set of abilities, which means it both acts as removal and also gives you a bonus for getting rid of their biggest thing. It's a very creative design that seems quite well-balanced and fun to play. Great card! You get 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Nanomachines by @Sweda
This is an interesting design that has the potential to become quite powerful later in the game if played early. Absorb is a keyword that's only been seen on one official card, which makes it cool to see it being utilized here, and to great effect. While it does have the downside of being easily removable early, I overall really like the card. You get a follow, 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
Category 5 - Vehicles
1st Place - Imperial Drone by @Jadefire
I quite enjoy the reference this is making, and it is balanced very well. It's a great payoff for vehicles while fueling itself through creating the pilots it needs to get value off of its first ability. The only thing I could see being a bit confusing is the fact that training is a keyworded mechanic now, so it may be possible to mistake "training counters" for counters that give Training, but that's an easy fix and I overall loved the card! You get 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Mechanized Yamabushi by @Revan
This is a really cool vehicle with a unique effect that allows it to continue being crewed past the turn you crewed it. I found it very interesting, and I think that it would be fun to play around with and a great card for vehicle decks seeing that, despite having a high crew cost, it has the possibility of remaining crewed. Fantastic card! You get 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Mech Pilot Academy by @SpellPiper2213
This is a great utility card for vehicle decks, giving incidental lifegain for playing the cards you already want in your deck, as well as giving you a way to make creatures to crew your machines. Not much else to say about this one, just a very solid design! You get 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
Category 6 - Artifacts and Enchantments
1st Place - Preserver of the Past by @LyndonF
This card works fantastically with what enchantment decks usually want to do, especially in Kamigawa. The enchantment recursion is especially useful for bringing back sagas, and the second ability provides a steady stream of small bodies to flood the board and hopefully give you an overwhelming advantage. Fantastic entry! You get a follow, 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Blade of the Two Realms by @Jadefire
I really enjoy the play on the Swords cycle that this is making, and Enchantment Artifact is a very interesting never-before-seen typeline. The combat damage ability is potentially backbreaking for your opponent if you can get something huge out early, but the protection from artifacts and enchantments makes it far more difficult to get your creature through unblocked than the swords that give protection from colors. Overall, I really liked the card! You get 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Mechanized Shinobi by @Revan
Once again, I don't really have a whole lot to say about the third-place entry for this category. It's a solid common that synergizes with both artifact and ninja strategies, and has an ability reminicient of an older keyword. I could definitely see this being a common in an actual set. Overall, a great entry! You get 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
Category 7 - Channel
1st Place - Renegade Overclocker by @Jadefire
Messing with phases has always been an interesting thing to me, and I find this to be a cool way of going about it. The channel ability is also a natural extension of the card, which I feel is vital for a good channel entry. The channel ability shouldn't feel out-of-place, and this does a fantastic job of integrating it into, and balancing it with, the card's design. Great job! You get 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Horobi's Chosen by @hileandr
This is a very well-designed, well-balanced card that slots nicely into any zombie or graveyard-based strategies. Both of the modes on this card are solid, although I can see the creature being played more than the channel. However, there are situations where both shine, and that makes this a very well-designed channel card! You get 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Praetor's Caller by @AboveAndAbout
This is a very interesting combination of card and channel, one which is far more tied together with flavor than with mechanics. But the flavor is quite nice on this one, and the abilities are quite nice as well. The channel has the potential to be a very powerful ability in the right deck, as we can see with cards like Entomb, but the ability to play it as a small body in the early game means that it's decently versatile. Overall a solid entry! You get a follow, 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
Category 8 - Old School
1st Place - Izumi, the Blood Chorus by @Jadefire
I think this is a really cool OG-Kamigawa style Samurai design. The second ability has the potential to do some really cool things, including making it so that when Izumi herself dies you get to deal 4 damage to something. The card synergizes very well with itself and other samurai, and I enjoyed the design a lot! You get 3 favorites, 3 points towards the overall score, and the ability to nominate an honorable mention from among any of the non-winning cards submitted in the contest that aren’t yours.
2nd Place - Sprout from the Lifevine by @Jaceberlin
This is a very interesting card, as it essentially allows you to turn any number of your forests into creatures, while still retaining the lands in your hand for later use. I love the concept, and while it's a bit vulnerable to boardwipes, there are definitely situations and decks in which this can be very useful. Overall, I quite liked it! You get a follow, 2 favorites, and 2 points towards the overall score.
3rd Place - Samurai Idol by @LyndonF
Like a few of the third-place winners before it, this is simply a solid common design that I found myself liking very much. Early-game it can be a mana rock, before being able to turn itself into a body when necessary later. I quite enjoy the versatility, and think that this is overall a very nice card! You get 1 favorite, and 1 point towards the overall score.
And now, here are the final standings!
1st Place - @Jadefire with 14 points! You get, in total, a whopping 19 favorites and 3 honorable mention nominations!
2nd Place - @hileandr with 8 points! You get, in total, 12 favorites and 1 honorable mention nomination!
3rd Place - We have a tie for third place, with both @Revan and @LyndonF getting 7 points! You each get 10 favorites. LyndonF has 2 honorable mention nominations, and Revan has 1.
The remaining contestants do not get any additional prizes, but I will list everyone here with their point totals and total prizes for easy reference.
5th Place – @SpellPiper2213 with 6 points! You get, in total, 6 favorites and 1 honorable mention nomination!
6th Place - @Castiel_Demiurge and @Jaceberlin are tied with 2 points! You each get 2 favorites in total.
8th Place - @Sweda and @AboveAndAbout are tied with 1 point! You each get 1 favorite in total.
Please tell me which cards you would like to give honorable mentions to if you have the ability to do so. You cannot give an HM to yourself, and the recipient of the HM will be granted an additional favorite. Also let me know which cards you would like favorited. If you would simply like me to go through your collection and favorite cards of my choice, let me know.
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ryoto-frontline-marshal
First of all, I'd like to have Ryoto be an honorable mention for the Modified category, by @Jadefire. It definitely reminds me of Odric, and I think it's a great modified card. Personally, my one suggestion would be when a creature with the specific ability enters under your control, but that's the only thing.
@Aggroman15 ;Could you favorite these cards:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/path-to-the-lighthouse
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/quick-catch
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/delayed-investigations
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/broker-of-the-damned
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/guide-through-the-city
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/rieta-forceful-evoker
This was truly an amazing challenge! Thank you so much for hosting it. It was wonderful to work on cards for this and see what other people made. Congratulations to the Top 3!
Could you favorite these two?
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/memories-1?list=user
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/you-enter-a-dragons-lair?list=user
(The second one contains a little dark comedy so favorite any other one of my cards if you don't feel like favoriting it)
Great contest, and I love that your wrote a little snippet about each winner with your thoughts. That's a great touch.
I'll use my honorable mention on Takagi Twins (https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/takagi-twins). A very unique and flavorful card.
You can favorite any of my cards you like. I have no preference.
Thanks to @SpellPiper2213 and @hileandr for your votes for honourable mentions as well!
My HM votes go to the following cards:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/ghost-in-the-shell-2
Congratulations to the rest of the top 3!
@Revan loses 3 points, as he no longer has a victory in the Ninjas category. This brings him down to 7 points. Your final prizes are 10 favorites and 1 honorable mention.
@LyndonF gains 3 points, as he has now been correctly identified as the winner of the Ninjas category. This puts him at 7 points as well, meaning that both affected smiths are now tied for third. Your final prizes are 10 favorites and 2 honorable mentions.
@hileandr, as you have 8 points and the affected smiths only have 7, you have been bumped up to 2nd place and get an additional favorite.
Please feel free to go through my collection and distribute the remaining favourites as you see fit:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/user/Jadefire/cards
For my favourites, just go through my collection and like what you want.