At the Portrait's Rim **Circuit Challenge**

MemoryHeadMemoryHead
edited April 2020 in Contests and Challenges
Throughout the history of MTG, a handful of mechanics  have employed modified card frames, the most recent example being the Adventure spells seen in Throne of Eldraine and how they turned the text box into a storybook in order to better convey the flavor of mechanic and set alike. You can see an example below, along with an attempt of mine to replicate it using Cardsmith:

  

Older mechanics have also warped the text box and frame to their purpose, of course, with Saga enchantments and the level up creatures of the original Zendikar block being the ones that spring most immediately to my mind. Consider experimenting with and looking into these. They tend to be rather interesting. Below, a real card with level up next to my Cardsmith rendition:

 

You could also consider using custom mechanics (custom creation is one of the main purposes of the site, after all). For example, creating the spellcraft mechanic that you can see used below was actually what inspired me to make this contest in the first place. Feel free to use it if you want, by the way.



If you're looking for ideas and examples of both real and custom-made frames, this is the folder I maintain of my own frame-changed cards. It's currently a bit empty, but I'm progressively filling it up. Feel free to use any of the mechanics that I've got in there for cards of your own:

http://mtgcardsmith.com/user/MemoryHead/sets/52120
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I'll probably close the contest for judging at the end of the month (so try to enter before May). There's a chance that I'll change it to a later date, but I wouldn't bet on it. I guess that it's time for me to list all of the rules:

 - There will be two categories. One will be for cards using real frame changes (such as Adventures and level up), while the other will be for cards using custom changes (such as spellcraft). This is mostly because I suspect that if they were all in a single category, I'd gravitate violently towards the custom concepts. I'll probably be ranking cards for each category using the good old first-second-third method and putting a few honorable mentions on the side.

 - I will be judging cards based off of factors including flavor, concept quality, formatting (taking factors such as the potential difficulty of this challenge's demands into account), balance, and realism. There will, of course, be penalties for issues such as missing artist credit.

 - There is no entry limit for new cards. Contestants may enter a single old card (made prior to this contest's creation-ish) into each category, taking care to note that it is in fact the old card. In addition, it's a black-bordered contest. Try to avoid entering un-cards.

 - What I'm doing for prizes is currently a bit of a mystery even to me, but it's probably favorites. I'll also probably favorite any entries that I particularly like the look of, just because I can.

First Place = 1 Circuit Point
Second Place = 3/4 Circuit Point
Third Place = 1/2 Circuit Point
Honorable Mention = 1/4 Circuit Point

**Circuit Points** - Each Category can earn Circuit Points, but you can only earn Circuit Points for your highest placement in either category, So if you earn First in one category and an Honorable Mention in the other, you will earn 1CP, and NOT 1 & 1/4 CP.

And finally, a few notes:

 - I am not counting Ikoria's new mutate mechanic as a frame changer. One line in the middle of the text box that isn't even necessary or always used (as can be seen on many of the alternate-art versions of cards with mutate) isn't what I'm looking for.

 - The purpose of this is creating cards with strange frames using CS. Yes, alternatives such as MSE have available templates for the easy creation of cards with things like level up and Adventure, but that isn't the point. Cards entered that are just using MSE or other, similar design tools will not be counted.

 - Cards with modified text boxes can be pretty hard / slow to make properly due to the number of times you've got to drop in and out of the edit mode on the site. I apologise in advance, I guess.

 - Everybody over on the discord, please try not to rope me into helping to design entries for my own contest. That'd be silly. For those unaware, there's a sort-of-unofficial Cardsmith discord. I'm sure that somebody will be able to provide a link if you're interested in joining.
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