The Card Design Challenge

[Raging Turtle]

Linky:  http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/designersearch/episode1

Wizards is doing a kind of 'survivor' thing for a new paid intern, and this week's part is pretty damn interesting if you've ever had an interest in the game.  Fifteen contestants have each made six cards, and the Wizard's designers critique each one.  I found it fascinating, even though I rarely play or buy new cards anymore.

[Margalis]

For fun I made up my own entry. Comments appreciated. Obviously I am hugely biased but I think it stacks up well agains the official entries. A lot of the official entries suffered from a few common problems:
1: Putting a bunch of mechanics on one card that are not related from a mechanical and/or flavor perspective.
2: Cards trying to be really cute and clever, or overcomplicated.
3: Cards that bring the rules to the forefront and mess around too much with the rules in general.

I think the cards I made up are bit on the uncreative side but not strictly vanilla and also are printable (with tweaks) for the most part. I also see them working in different environments/games (limited, constructed, etc) and targeting different player types.
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Death and Anger
1{B/R}{B/R}
Sorcery
Put X -1/-1 counters on target creature, where X is the number of B used to pay for this card.
Put Y +1/-1 counters on target creature, where Y is the number of R used to pay for this card.


Replace Soul (uncommon)
UUX
Instant
Counter target creature spell with converted mana cost X. Then place any creature card with converted mana cost X or less from you hand directly into play.


Taxonomy (rare)
2GG
Enchantment
GG,T: Reveal the top two cards of your library and your hand. If a library card revealed in this way does not share a creature type with a creature in play or in your hand, place that card into your hand. Otherwise place it on the bottom of your library.



Thrull Evolver (rare)
1
Artifact
T, if target non-token thrull is placed in the graveyard from play this turn, put a 1/1 black thrull creature token into play under your control. This thrull has: "This creature has all abilities that all non-token thrulls in play have."



Garbage Land (common)
Land
T: Add 1 colorless and 1 mana of any color to your mana pool.
When Garbage Land comes into play, each opponent may place a land from their hand into play under their control.



Avenging Angel (uncommon)
3WW
Flying, Flash, Protection from Red
2/2
Retribution (this creature's casting cost is reduced by 1 for each point of damage you've taken this turn)


Comments:
In general, the rules text need work!

Death and Anger: A hyrbid/kicker/split card that rewards you for mana flexibility. This is common to introduce a new mechanic (varying effect based on mana color paid) while based on very standard x/x counters.
Replace Soul: A counter and a uncounterable creature in one.
Taxonomy: Green creature-based card draw with interesting restrictions.
Thrull Evolver: The centerpiece of a Thrull deck that makes being a Thrull actually matter. I think this is rare as the recycle effect by itself is uncommon.
Garbage Land: Accleration and color fixing that is somewhat symetrical.
Avenging Angel: An example of a mechanic that uses life directly as a resource and is better the worse you are doing.

[Raging Turtle]

Death and Anger:  The red half should be +X/+0 to make the abilities more seperate, otherwise a nice common removal/boost spell for limited.


Replace Soul:  To actually get printed, I'm pretty sure this would have to be rare and possibly UUUX.  That's an extremely powerful two for one effect.  I like the concept though, seems original.


Taxonomy:  Would probably be worded 'GG, Tap:  Reveal your hand and the top card of your library' - I think a repeatable card drawing effect for green isn't going to give you the chance to get two cards at a time.  And even in my less powered version, it's still very strong.  Also, I'd consider making it so that if the top card creature type matches a type in your hand or in play, you keep the card.  Casual players would like that a lot more for tribal decks, especially green tribal decks where elves/beasts are so common.  Otherwise you'd specifically have to mix up your creature types to use this.


Thrull Evolver:  It'd probably cost 3 or 4 for the initial artifact, or have an activation cost of 1-3 on the tap ability.  1 CC seems way too low and abusable in for insane combo decks.  It's an odd card in that it seems to be giving thrulls an ability that slivers have naturally.


Garbage Land:  It'd have to be rare and legendary.  Drop four of these, you can tap 8 mana while your opponents probably won't have 4 extra land drops in addition to their own.  Would be an automatic one-of in every single deck, though, which makes me think it's still very overpowered.  There needs to be a reason for every deck NOT to play this.


Avenging Angel:  I REALLY liked this one at first glance.  The Retribution ability is perfect for white.  And as long as you only remove 1 colorless from the casting cost, I don't think it would be overpowered at 2/2.  The one major problem is that you're almost never going to be damaged during your own turn, and thus the ability is going to be useless 99% of the time.  Giving it the ability to be played like an instant would remedy that, however.


Cool cards.  Fun to critique them as well.  Anyone else want to make some?   

[Xilren's Twin]

Replace Soul:  To actually get printed, I'm pretty sure this would have to be rare and possibly UUUX.  That's an extremely powerful two for one effect.  I like the concept though, seems original.

I would say it would be UUXX :) Cool concept but way to strong otherwise.

Garbage Land:  It'd have to be rare and legendary.  Drop four of these, you can tap 8 mana while your opponents probably won't have 4 extra land drops in addition to their own.  Would be an automatic one-of in every single deck, though, which makes me think it's still very overpowered.  There needs to be a reason for every deck NOT to play this.

How about rare legendary, and when you play it you must sacrifice 2 basic lands already in play and you can get rid of the "opponent gets a land drop too" part

Xilren

[Margalis]

Comments on comments:

I'm not sure how good replace soul is. If it is countered you don't get the second part of the spell either. In a lot of ways this isn't any better than countering a spell and then playing a creature afterwards. Although if you do the math it is too cheap, basically X for a creature and UU for a counter.

It maybe should be 1UU and say "exactly X" instead of "X or less" or something like that.

The upside here is that you can pay X colorless for a creature and you can play it during your opponents turn. I originally conceived it as a way around counterspells but the way I worded it it doesn't actually work like that, and I like my final wording better.

I'm not sure just how powerful this card would be, you have to pay UU2 just to counter a bear and play your own. In many situations playing just remove soul separately would be better.

This card would rock with Urzatron though.


Taxonomy - this was intended as more of a Johnny Card. Potentially drawing 2 cards at a time is huge but that effect will quickly diminish unless thanks to the unique type clause. Having to mix up your card types was the idea. It is potentially very powerful but you can't just throw in 4 elves, 4, birds and 8 beasts, in that case it won't be doing anything, it's just a dead card.

The power here would depend a lot on the environment it was in and how tribal oriented it was. In some blocks finding a bunch of creatures with different types is going to be difficult.


Thrull Evolver - this was an attempt to make thrulls useful and actually matter, as right now they suck. You are probably right about being abusable with combo decks but other than that it really isn't a very good card. Also it is probably a bit harder to break than you think given that the recycle ability only works on non-tokens and creates tokens, so you can't just do something like sac, use mana to untap, sac again, etc.

Would you play this card in Fallen Empires?

Garbage Land - this was kind of a joke, originally it just produced 1 mana of any color, hence the title 'garbage land.' Then I thought that was too weak and changed it to be really overpowered but left the name the same.

I think almost all land cards are boring so I didn't spend any more time on it. Land doesn't excite me. I was messing around with this for a while and then though "fuck it, it's a land."

For one colored mana is this card even playable? I don't know, maybe but probably not.

Avenging Angel - this has flash, which means it can be played as an instant. Yeah, without that it would be pretty useless. I think the retributio mechanic is interesting in that instead of a 'win more' mechanic it is a 'lose less' mechanic.

[Rhonstet]

I would have redone Garbage Land as such.

Whenever Garbage Land enters play, choose an opponent.  That opponent specifies a color.

T: Add two mana of the color specified to your mana pool.

This makes play a little easier, rewards people for playing multicolor decks, and provides limited use in a red-vs-blue scenario.  The land also become a potential liability if that card changes controllers.

[eldaec]

In most cases Rhonstet's Garbage Land still reads...

t: Add 2 to your mana pool

I suspect Maro would tell you that getting mana acceleration in the early part of the game without paying for it with tempo is a problem. It's much better than Urzatron for instance.

Something like...

t: Add one mana of any colour to your mana pool. Each opponent may put a basic land from their hand into play.

Might just fly though.

In the current environment it's an auto-4-of in alomst every deck, but it might just shift the meta game back toward sub-$100 mana bases, since it rewards your opponent for not playing 4x Breeding Pool, 4xHallowed Fountain, 4xSteam Vents, 4xWatery Grave, 4xGodless Shrine as a mana base.

[Margalis]

Garbage land is dumb.

In all honesty I just threw it in there to satisfy the requirements, I know it is broken. My problem was that I just don't find lands interesting. Most of them are some sort of fixer or a one-colorless with some random special ability.

I can think of very few cool lands. Boseiju was nice. The Ravnica bounce-lands are pretty well designed. Those are the only ones that come to mind right now.