Category: Deadly Designs

Hey everyone. This is Scott from the top four of the Great Designer Search 3.

In this series of articles I give some thoughts on Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Inspired by the recent talk of Alrund’s Epiphany potentially being ban worthy in standard, I thought it might be fun today to see if we can come up with some extra turn spells that aren’t miserable.

Hey everyone. This is Scott from the top four of the Great Designer Search 3.

In this series of articles I give some thoughts on Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Today I want to talk about a topic that’s been coming up ever since… well, even just a few days after Innistrad: Midnight Hunt was released on Magic Arena. The disparity between blue/black and the other colors in the draft format.

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we looked at my picks for the top 10 best designed cards in Throne of Eldraine, but now that the set has been released for a while, it seems that we have a bit of a problem on our hands: the color pie.

Used as a way to balance the mechanics of the game across all five colors, the color pie helps ensure a relatively stable metagame. But recently there have been two big issues: green’s section of the pie has grown too big, and white’s has shrunk too small.

Let’s take a look at each issue individually, and give some suggestions for how they could be fixed, starting with green’s dominance.

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we brainstormed what some new lands might look like for the Commander format. But with the new set Throne of Eldraine just released, this week I want to take a look at what I think are the top 10 best designed cards in the new set.

For this list, more than constructed playability or flavor, we’re focused on the new design space cards carve out, the elegance of their design, and the mechanical interconnectivity they have with the rest of the set.

So think less Snapcaster and Liliana, more Stitcher’s Apprentice and Ghoulcaller’s Bell.

Even though Throne of Eldraine has a ton of cool fairy tale designs in it, I think they’ve already gotten plenty of attention. Today I want to focus on the lesser-sung heroes of the set: the nuts, bolts, and diamonds in the rough.

This is also my personal list. Your own will of course vary, and that’s awesome!

So with that out of the way let’s get started with…

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we had to step out of our designer-comfort-zone to do an article on Historic’s implementation on Arena. But this time we’re back, and with the recent release of the Commander 2019 decks (and the Brawl decks too), I want to talk about lands for the Commander format.

Because let’s be honest, Simic Guildgate and Naya Panorama aren’t the most exciting parts of the pre-made Commander decks.

Every year the Commander pre-made decks are packed with cool new creatures and spells, but the lands always fall short. I’m not saying that they should reprint fetchlands or ABUR dual lands (although one can wish…), but I think there’s still plenty of room for innovation.

We have tons of quirky creatures and spells in Magic, why can’t we have some quirky lands too? And in a format where one-ofs are the name of the game, quirky one-of lands could be a lot of fun.

So here’s twelve lands I’ve brainstormed that could be fun to see in Commander pre-made decks in the future. They’re made with the Commander format in mind, with an effort to make them not become staples in Legacy/Vintage. We don’t want their prices getting jacked up, making them unavailable for Commander players.

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we usually talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective… but today some big news hit, and we have to discuss it.

In case you missed it, Wizards dropped the most recent State of the Beta, and it’s a doozy. While there’s a lot of info in it, the most impactful for most people has been the announcements regarding Historic, the format on Arena where our old cards will be playable.

While there was some good news, including clarification that there would be ranked Historic, best of three, and more, there was one huge bombshell: starting in November, it will cost 2 wildcards to craft 1 Historic card.

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we used our powers of deduction to try and predict the mechanics in the upcoming Throne of Eldraine set. But this time I want to pose a question: is the upkeep step going extinct?

Paradox Haze says: “Uh, I hope not…”

First, you might be wondering two things: “why would you bother thinking about this?” and “who cares?”

So let’s take a look at both those questions, starting with part one, the inspiration behind this question: evidence of the upkeep step becoming extinct.

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we talked at length about Risen Reef, but this time I want to focus on the future, specifically the next set that’s coming out in the fall: Throne of Eldraine.

We’ve seen a lot of art from the set and heard that the inspiration behind it is “Grimm’s fairy tales meets Camelot,” but we still don’t know much about the actual mechanics. So that’s why today I want to take the hints that we’ve gotten and try to figure out what the cards in the set might actually do.

It might seem silly to try and guess the mechanics when they’ll just be spoiled in a few weeks, but as a design exercise it can still be fun. Even though we probably won’t guess right, perhaps the ideas we come up with could inspire some custom cards or sets of our own!

There’s two mechanics we can guess about, so let’s go ahead and start with:

Hey there! I’m Scott from the top four of last year’s Great Designer Search 3. Welcome back to another installment of Deadly Designs, where we talk about Magic card design from an outsider’s perspective.

Last time we talked about new cards that could’ve been printed in Modern Horizons, but now it’s time to bring it back to a single-card discussion, specifically about one reefy boy.

You can’t spell “hUG of death” without “UG!”

There were a lot of surprisingly powerful cards that came out of the M20 Core Set, and Risen Reef is near the top of the list. But my question is: is it too good?

It’s easy to jump on an answer to that question. Something like: “No, of course it’s not too good, it dies to literally everything!” or “Yes, of course it’s too good, just look at it!”

But what I want to do is break down the card by (1) comparing it to other similar cards, and (2) creating some new cards as a thought exercise. So let’s get started!