#cfac 04

[magicarasa]

Sparkler by Federica

Welcome to week 4 of the CardsFromArt Challenge! I bring the art, you bring the custom Magic card design based on that art! Please submit entries directly through this link, which is also the “Submit” link on the main page of this blog. Include CFAC04 somewhere in the submission.

Feel free to mock your card up using any appropriate program and send it in with the art I’ve provided AND artist credit! If you can’t do that, just send in the text of your card and I’ll make a mock up of it.

Be sure to include:

Name – mana cost Type – subtype, rarity Any abilities, power/toughness CFAC04

Bonus Challenge:

Let’s role play this week. You’re in Wizards R&D and we’re late in the process. Most of the card file is finalized but there are still a few last minute holes that need filling. Specifically, we need a card that fits alphabetically between Dead Reckoning and Deathforge Shaman. The specific kinds of spells needed are a targeted removal design, a draw/filtering design, and finally a mana sink design. Pick one of those three and come up with an appropriate name that fits alphabetically between the two mentioned cards and you’ll get a bonus point.

Weekly Winners:

Three winners this week. One bonus point to each of the three cards that showcase the best targeted removal design, the best draw/filtering design, and the best mana sink.

If you have any questions please ask me. You have until 11:59 pm EST on Friday, March 3, 2017 to submit your entry!

[bestbusinessguides]

Following the lesson - Brenham Banner Press

Brenham Banner Press

Following the lesson Brenham Banner Press ... chat with Krause Elementary students in Kwiatkowski's class as they work together on a lesson Wednesday morning. Sun and Penate, part of an Omega International visit, were learning new ideas for a program that will help students in China learn English.

source http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNFDrP5WmjjYuEjG66Ez8dxCQqV80w&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&ei=FNG3W6jUJY_azAa36ZLICg&url=http://www.brenhambanner.com/news/following-the-lesson/image_79b8e1a1-cfac-5d4a-ba77-9db7411d9acc.html from Blogger https://ift.tt/2O89486 October 05, 2018 at 04:07PM

[magicarasa]

CFAC 04 Season 2 Entries -- Part 2

Sparkler by Federica

I just had a hella busy day at work and got home later than I expected. I don’t have time to pontificate on how great today’s entries are; I just have to show you!

@wapulatus

Some cheeky card filtering that can backfire like crazy if your opponent is packing graveyard hate. Basically turns your graveyard into your deck, with the added bonus of being able to control what card you get. Reason it is relatively cheap is that A) Necropotence is much better, and has less restrictions, B) This can be shut down and can kill you from a Tormond’s Crypt, Bojuka Bog, etc. Also contains a cheeky Dragon Age quote about a cheeky character.

Necropotence being better isn’t necessarily the best measuring stick for a card’s power level. That said, this is mostly alright except for one unfortunate oversight. This lets you recur the same spell over and over again every turn. Use it, it goes to your graveyard (or if it’s a creature you can just get it back for sure whenever it does end up dying), and next upkeep you choose to “draw” it from there. Throw in “If a card would enter your graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead” and I would be perfectly good with this design as is.

Two points!

@yeens-human

HELLO FRIEND

I am having difficulty with mtg card makers on mobile so HERE GOES MY SUBMISSION

HELLO FRIEND

I feel like we’ve been graced with a bona fide celebrity. Thanks for submitting!

Color-wise we have the restrictions you expect from white with the stat reduction and pseudo-revival that black gives, essentially allowing you to use their creature as a blocker, something that doesn’t really happen outside of higher-costed red treason effects. That’s a cool sort of shift that’s completely justified here.

What I don’t think is justified is the restricted casting cost. I think this spell could work in mono black (and understand why white is there). Death Wind is the baseline effect here, Battle at the Bridge shows us you can get additional value from that, and Cruel Revival is perhaps the closest non-X spell we have to this. All told, I’d try this at XB and think the right set/environment could justify a cost of XWB (perhaps with some tweaking with regard to power level).

Two points!

@dimestoretajic

yay dragon age art wooooooooooooooo

But yeah! Late game drain spell! Pretty straightforward. I was really just in this to make sure the flavour text was good (it made my DA-loving GF say “tee hee”, so I literally can’t lose now :D). Enjoy!

I love the flavor of this being a really temporary “reanimation” type thing, just long enough for the dead to rip the life from your opponent, not even long enough to wait for the physical remains to come up and do it.

The trouble is this design is really weak. Suffer the Weak accomplishes the same thing except it does so by exiling cards from your opponent’s graveyard, not your own. I like the flavor of this design and would love to see that come through, but it needs something more to make exiling your own dead really worth it. I’d rather find that than make this more like Suffer the Past. The first thing that comes to mind for me is dropping the X restriction and instead making the life loss equal to combined power of the exiled creature cards and the life gain equal to the combined toughness. That’s just one option though.

Two points!

@ridley15

I don’t care if it’s in an official set or a fan project (*wink*), there needs to be a card named “Dead Man’s Tale”. The name just barely missed the challenge requirements, unfortunately. Anyways, my main sticking point with this design was whether or not I wanted there to be a cap on how many creatures you could sacrifice. In the end I went with this version, mainly because I liked the symmetry of paying six mana to draw six cards. Power-wise, I’m not sure if letting you sacrifice any number of creatures could get out of hand or not, but the high cost in both mana and expendable creatures makes me find that unlikely. Except in Commander I guess. In fact, if I was specifically designing this for Commander, I’d consider taking the cap off. After all, Commander’s basically all about making stuff get out of hand.

There’s something about designs like this that I really enjoy--that you can break it down to paying two mana to draw two cards, which is really powerful. That’s one of the first ways I think about designs and while it’s often erroneous (just two mana won’t draw you any cards with this in hand obviously) it’s still an easy place to go to that’s also enticing.

Black usually has access to zombie tokens so by the time you’re casting a 6 CMC spell (even in standard) there is undoubtedly the possibility you have a hundred tokens littering the battlefield. I think this could work without the restriction but I think then it has a strong argument for being a mythic rare. Personally I prefer this version. It’s still very powerful anyway and I think the hard numbers revolving around the number 6 are more evocative.

Two points!

@amtgplayer

The second ability is my take on post-regenerate-era skeleton regeneration. Regenerate does have its problems, but the new template that usually replaces it, “~ gains indestructible until EOT”, just feels wrong for a skeleton. Of course the ability on this card is tweaked to fit its other ability, but I think in general “when ~ dies, you may pay to have ~ come back” sells the flavor well.

This ability is certainly more flavorful. Like it’s just dropping all over like broken bones here. This is an awesomely flavorful necromancer all around. I do think the sort of token creation allowed by the first ability qualifies this card for rare. It can happen at instant speed and can mean huge card advantage (though it uses a resource black does want to have around; the graveyard) so long as you have the resources to pour into it. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but in general repeatable instant-speed token generation goes at rare more often than not. Otherwise uncommon would absolutely be the place and it still isn’t out of the question.

Two points!

[magicarasa]

CFAC 04 Season 2 Entries -- Part 3

Sparkler by Federica

Sorry these are running pretty late today. Here’s the final batch of entries for this week’s CFAC!

@sabertoothlotus

I was trying to find something different to tie a black -x/-x spell to, and it occurred to me that I can use creatures in the graveyard as a resource. I decided the X payment and the exile cost were needed to keep things balanced.

Welcome to the party! We had a similar design yesterday; XB is the baseline for this sort of effect. It doesn’t need the added cost of exiling stuff from your graveyard and with that it could definitely include some sort of bonus. Perhaps some token creation?

Two points!

@sphinxs-revelation

After finding out that there is an awesome Skeleton token, I just had to make a spell that created it. I was debating whether to add a player as an additional target to prevent fizzling the token production, but I’m actually a fan of the idea of spells failing if cast carelessly.

Huh, speak of the devil. The -X/-X spell with additional cost and some bonus. I actually think this would be fine at XB. This is likely a rare as well. Otherwise this is basically the sort of design I’ve been talking about the past two days with regard to this kind of spell.

Two points!

@shadowknight1224

So I got ambitious. This is a bit of everything. It’s costly enough to be a mana sink, it’s card draw at a cost (your creatures) and it’s mass removal (albeit not targeted). The flavour text is inspired by Hayley Westenra’s Dark Waltz (which I recommend to give a listen for ghost-related stuff, it was great inspiration for this card).

This does it all but at that cost it’s pretty reasonable to want something like this. I don’t actually think the tokens need flying or two be more than one creature type in a vacuum but neither of those things are some egregious flaw or anything. Honestly I think the only thing I have to add is I believe the template would be something like “For each creature you control destroyed this way” and then that but with don’t tossed in there for the second bit.

Two points!

@nine-effing-hells

“Deathforge” sounds like a necromantic discipline, perhaps using souls to empower or fuel spells. Since the art depicts a mage (feels a little bit weird using fanart that can be so easily identified as such) using what appears to be a soul-infused spell that looks a fair bit like flames, I interpreted that as soul-fueled burn. On its own, the card is another FTK variant, but presumably the “Deathforge” series of cards in this hypothetical set would offer some other fodder for this. (This card is meant to be in the “targeted removal” slot.)

Just a 3/2 that can hit for two when it enters is a good start. Being able to get additional bonus from that (and sort of hate on potential graveyard hate) is really nifty.

There aren’t a huge number of examples, but I think you could push this to 3 CMC without much issue. It’s exciting with upside but the two color cost is prohibitive enough to justify that.

Two points!

@outerspace-messiah

After finding the word “Dear” comes between “dead” and “death,” I liked the idea of having a wishlist to Death as a child has a wishlist for Santa. I’m going for draw spell, but it also works as other things as well because sometimes death mages have multiple things they want to ask of Death.

It’s a kind of restrictive cost, so huge things can’t be done with it like infinite life from Exsanguinate, but I thought the final pricing at instant speed was appropriate. I also think it’s cool as an instant because instant speed blockers (skeleton blockers!) are nice.

Finishing things off with one more variant on a favorite this week. The cost is prohibitive but honestly I’m not sure it’s enough here. A great deal of power for modal spells comes from the options they provide. WBG for two +1/+1 counters isn’t great. Abzan Charm is worth a card slot because it can do other things. What you’re paying for with this is versatility. Instant is actually the thing I’d drop here.

So this is an X spell that exiles creatures from your grave as an additional cost. The difference from this and previous ones is that it isn’t targeted removal but instead provides a few choices of ability. All things black doesn’t often get at instant speed, let alone picking them a la carte as needed at the moment.

I like the options and I think this has really cool potential as something akin to a command cycle (maybe each color cares about a specific card type though that gets a bit tricky).

Two points!

[magicarasa]

CFAC 04 Season 2 -- Winners!

Sparkler by Federica

Alrighty, let’s do this already! Sorry for the delay this week everyone. I wish there was a good excuse but honestly I just got really lazy and played Morrowind until my mods crashed my computer twice on my days off. Anyway.

Three winners--targeted removal, draw/filtering, and mana sink.

@nine-effing-hells

This was the toughest choice for me to make this week. Targeted removal had a real plethora of entries. Ultimately I came down on the side of this neat build around uncommon that could be a real work horse in a limited environment with some effects to support it.

One bonus point!

@ridley15

I really love the symmetry here. Six cards for six mana with an appropriate additional cost for black. The only “flaw” here is that the design couldn’t work a third 6 in. This is obviously the winner for the card draw category.

One bonus point!

@amtgplayer

Which leaves us our mana sink for the week. This one is intensely flavorful and while I question such repeatable token creation at instant speed and uncommon, that exile cost does help limit it a bit. Cool work!

One bonus point!