impossiblyatomictiger

Our winners this week are @bread-into-toast, @thepeppermintpig, and @yd12k.

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@bread-into-toast — Spellthirst Vitalist

While big splashy cards have an undeniable appeal, one thing you'll often find about me in particular is that I prefer lower-to-the-ground, value-heavy designs, of which this is a perfect example. This card presents a very clear gameplan, capable of generating unbelievable amounts of advantage off of an aggressive body, and heavily encouraging you towards a spellslinging playstyle in a black/green deck, which is exactly what this contest asks for.

@thepeppermintpig — Jushi Balance-Keeper

Another value engine, but this one much splashier. Encouraging a direct mixture of enchantments and artifacts, with both the nontoken restriction on the trigger and the actual effect ensuring you can't just cheat one of the two with token generation, this presents a very interesting deckbuilding puzzle, tasking you with finding a way to get the best of both worlds, without leaning too hard into one or the other. Excellent combination of flavor and gameplay in that regard. One minor note, though: the effect should say "return up to one target enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand."

@yd12k — Guul Draz Arena

Sometimes, simplicity is best, and this card serves as a perfect example of that. On its face, this is just a sidegraded Phyrexian Arena, a comparison the card is designed to get you to make. But, on a closer look, the way it plays is very different. In a baseline scenario, where you're simply playing one land every turn, it functions much the same way as its phyrexian counterpart, drawing you a single extra card extra turn, albeit with the chance of an unlucky draw preventing you from getting the advantage next turn, and the ability to turn it off whenever you want. However, when you start to build around it, it has the chance for explosive amounts of power, turning even a simple evolving wilds into a massive burst of card advantage—as well as a massive burst of self-damage. Taking all the risk-reward elements of the original arena and putting them on an all-new axis makes this a clear winner for me.

Dragon, Saint, and their universes within versions

Art links

Dragon's art by u/ElCuervoBorracho

Shi's art by simon bradley james went

Saint's art by u/v_wind

Axil's art by Victor Lozada

Card transcriptions below

This card was made by Zarepath, for the set Netropolis, a cyberpunk set with many new mechanics.

Upload is one of the new mechanics in the set, letting you exile a card face-up and later pay 2 mana to put it into your hand at sorcery speed. In different contexts, it interacts with cards in different ways. When you upload the top card of your library, it functions as card selection. When you upload a permanent on the field, it functions as a more expensive bounce. When you upload a card from your hand, it functions as a discard with possible recursion. In this case, it makes the otherwise cheap tutor spell functionally 4 mana, with the exception that you are able to pay half of the mana on a later turn.

Our winners this week are @bread-into-toast, @thepeppermintpig, and @yd12k.

~

@bread-into-toast — Spellthirst Vitalist

While big splashy cards have an undeniable appeal, one thing you'll often find about me in particular is that I prefer lower-to-the-ground, value-heavy designs, of which this is a perfect example. This card presents a very clear gameplan, capable of generating unbelievable amounts of advantage off of an aggressive body, and heavily encouraging you towards a spellslinging playstyle in a black/green deck, which is exactly what this contest asks for.

@thepeppermintpig — Jushi Balance-Keeper

Another value engine, but this one much splashier. Encouraging a direct mixture of enchantments and artifacts, with both the nontoken restriction on the trigger and the actual effect ensuring you can't just cheat one of the two with token generation, this presents a very interesting deckbuilding puzzle, tasking you with finding a way to get the best of both worlds, without leaning too hard into one or the other. Excellent combination of flavor and gameplay in that regard. One minor note, though: the effect should say "return up to one target enchantment card from your graveyard to your hand."

@yd12k — Guul Draz Arena

Sometimes, simplicity is best, and this card serves as a perfect example of that. On its face, this is just a sidegraded Phyrexian Arena, a comparison the card is designed to get you to make. But, on a closer look, the way it plays is very different. In a baseline scenario, where you're simply playing one land every turn, it functions much the same way as its phyrexian counterpart, drawing you a single extra card extra turn, albeit with the chance of an unlucky draw preventing you from getting the advantage next turn, and the ability to turn it off whenever you want. However, when you start to build around it, it has the chance for explosive amounts of power, turning even a simple evolving wilds into a massive burst of card advantage—as well as a massive burst of self-damage. Taking all the risk-reward elements of the original arena and putting them on an all-new axis makes this a clear winner for me.

Our runners-up this week are @izzet-always-r-versus-u, @jackiscool231, and @nine-effing-hells.

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@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Consortium Mindblade

This was one of a few entries in the contest to note that both Battles and Planeswalkers technically fulfill the conditions of the contest, being noncreature card types that aren't really supported primarily by any color. (white has a bit of planeswalker support but not enough to matter.) Enough about the big picture, though. The card itself is a very fun design, synergizing with your own battles while countering your opponent's planeswalkers, dealing heavy unblockable damage and getting you either a copy of your siege's ETB effect, or stealing an opponent's walker.

@jackiscool231 — Testifying Victim

Similar to one of our winners, this is a card that encourages a sacrifice-heavy brew using enchantments and artifacts. Although this creates a much different playstyle, encouraging massive sacrifice loops. My only concern is that, even with controlling an enchantment being a bigger hurdle for these kinds of decks than controlling a zombie for gravecrawler, this might end up too powerful.

@nine-effing-hells — Talesong Phoenix

If there's one thing I love, it's a good phoenix. And this is a real good phoenix. (I'm not using ligatures, sorry.) This card does everything you'd want out of a sagas-matter phoenix card, and encourages you to have a ton of sagas running all at once with final chapters triggering on each of your turns, which I just think is a very fun play pattern.

https://beyondcanon.com/story/1097

By the way... Tomorrow (Sunday July 19th, at 12:00pm PST) we’ll be playing Peak on stream on the Homestuck Official Discord! This is just a preview what’s going to be a more regular offering for our Patrons, but we’ll be doing a few more full-community streams!

For one, I feel we saw this a bit with Lylac with not only her interest in specifically older cartoons, but with her interest in bombs and old technology. She has an alchemy set in her room, but prefers homemade bombs rather then explosions made from Nymph magic. Her friend who is more intune with Black culture is kind of dismissive but slightly tolerant of her hobby in cartoons and bombs.

And Bowie is a girl who didn't have the same upbringing that most Nymph's would have, and thus wasn't exposed to that culture as a young child. So she might feel as if she wants to connect in some way and learn about her culture later on in life which can definitely be a pretty alienating experience! Which is why I think its so great that they're friends and they seem to have a genuine connection with one another. And would explain why both of Lylac's friends who already sort of tease her for HER interests is so distrusting and hostile about Bowie getting too "close to a Nymph".

We aren’t women to any of them, we aren’t people, and we sure as hell could never be the *actual* victims. All any of these freaks can see us as are predators and rapists and abusers in waiting.

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'JK Rowling posted upskirt photos of a woman on Twitter' to Cas 'I love you'. /End ID]

No one doing this should be allowed to call themselves a feminist.

Now I'm thinking about the prefix "pen," which as far as I can think I may have only ever seen in "penultimate"