#custommagiccardswithnonmagiclore

@outerspace-messiah:

A lot of people ask for triple strike, but it’s very hard to convey that mechanically. I wanted to try my hand at it and what better than to try it out on a Cerberus?

The flavor I decided to go with is to have one head deal first strike damage and the other two heads deal normal strike damage. Trample ensures that each head is useful and continues chomping through the first blocker. However, I had the +X/+0 effect only last until the end of combat in case of multiple combat phases.

Understanding that pump effects exist and this is 9 potential damage per combat by itself, I went with a steeper cost for this could be a potential game ender.

I and many others have had a lot of fun doing these and they give us opportunities to flex our creativity. Thank you so much for setting up these competitions!

It’s been my pleasure to host the challenges for everyone :)

So! Scoring for this card:

1 point for your submission - Ding! Easy point! 1 point for not breaking the color pie. - Double strike, trample, cerberus, +X/+0; all in Red’s color pie. Point! 1 point for not putting something broken on the card. - Here’s the tricky part: 3/3 double strike with a slight upside for five has precedent, and while I would be more comfortable with this at six mana, it isn’t quite “busted” at five. Point! 1 point for using proper templating (or at least close to it) - This is equally as tricky, though for a different reason. This templating works, but isn’t the cleanest, and the word “combat” is really good at breaking people out of the fantasy of the game. I would change it to “First time each turn” and “end of turn” and let it have some fun with multiple combat steps. That’s more of a preference, though; this templating is fine. Point! 1 point for impressing me with a cool design - This is certainly interesting and accomplishes the idea of triple-strike, but it’s not quite jumping out at me as “impressive.” Nice try, though.

Overall, solid card that I would certainly see being included in a set. Four points!

@palaguin:

Wow, it is the end of an era.  I have created 55 cards for this series of challenges (number includes doing cards for all 6 options in one challenge when only 2 were needed).   There was one other artwork I really liked, and another that screamed possibilities, but in the end I am a diehard Red player, so I had to go with a fiery red beat.  I was afraid 2/4 was too weak, and 4/4 was too string, so I made it a ¾.  With the possibility of doublestrike and rangestrike, it definitely fits the artwork in having 3 heads.

It’s been real, it’s been fun, and most of the time it’s been real fun.  Ta ta.

Quoth the penguin…evermore.

It’s been a pleasure having you and your blasted inverse frame along for the challenge :)

And it looks like we’re going to have a recurring theme for this artwork...

1 point for your submission - Submitted? Check! Point! 1 point for not breaking the color pie. - Menace, double strike, breathing fire on your opponent’s face, all in the color pie. Point! 1 point for not putting something broken on the card. - Mmm, this one’s close. I usually like to think of Menace as covering two “points” between power and toughness, so with an added ability that makes it a biiiiit much...but Legendary rounds it out a bit more so I’ll let it through. Point! 1 point for using proper templating (or at least close to it) - Part of me wants to dock you for the frame here, but I won’t; however, you do have a glaring templating problem here: this ability is phrased such that the creature is the one choosing whether to deal the damage or not, and creatures can’t make those decisions. It would have to change to “You may have it deal damage equal to its power to target player.” Sorry, no point this time. 1 point for impressing me with a cool design - Like I said before, working triple strike is interesting, but not exactly gripping. No point here.

All told, three points. Nice job, and thanks again for being such a long-standing figure in the challenge!

@amtgplayer:

Colorshifted Desecration Demon!

For some reason, this piece gives me a feeling that the giant dragon is blowing all those creatures away, but won’t actually attack any time soon. The problem is that bouncing one creature per turn sounds like it can get repetitive, so I decided to bounce progressively more and more creatures… If the opponent opts to do so.

This comes out of the gate slowly, but it will soon cost a lot of mana to keep it tapped down, so the opponent had better find an answer to this soon!

Ah, good ol’ Desecration Demon. I played one of these in my mono-Black deckback in RTR-THS Standard.

This is a pretty adorable color-shifted card, but let’s see how it stacks up!

1 point for your submission. - Easy-peasy! Point! 1 point for not breaking the color pie. - The closest thing to a break here is the Dragon card type, but that can bleed into other colors sometimes, so it passes. Could’ve made it a Leviathan, though :P. Point! 1 point for not putting something broken on the card. - Dessy Demon was strong but not broken, and this is arguably worse than it, so I think we’re good. Point! 1 point for using proper templating (or at least close to it) - Based on the Demon, this seems to be properly templated. Point! 1 point for impressing me with a cool design (this will be the hardest point to earn) - I do quite like the card, and I do like color-shifting cards properly, but it’s not quite the kind of “oomph” I’m looking for. A solid card, but no point here.

Four points! Thanks for the submission, and the long-time participation in the challenge!

@custommagiccardswithnonmagiclore:

I really like the idea of conditional keyword grant, so the first ability is a reflection of that. But because I feel the effect is a bit narrow, I give it something that can trigger itself easier in the form of Hordeling, which becomes active when you control five or more nontoken creatures.

The second ability is the reason I’m hesitant to give Hordeling ability to trigger off token creatures, because red can just spawn in a lot of Goblin tokens out of nowhere.

Interesting. Granting a keyword based on a specific symbol on the card is interesting...but not actually something normal Magic can do right now. But I’ll talk about that more when we break it down:

1 point for your submission. - There’s the easy part. Point! 1 point for not breaking the color pie. - Haste, damage; yep, this one works. Point! 1 point for not putting something broken on the card. - Certainly powerful, but I think calling it “broken” would be jumping the gun. Point! 1 point for using proper templating (or at least close to it) - Here, we run into a problem. Checking exact symbols on cards isn’t something normal Magic can do; that’s reserved for silver border. In fact, I’m not entirely sure if there is a way in normal Magic for this to work, outside of just giving everything haste. 1 point for impressing me with a cool design - interesting space, to be sure, but not quite enrapturing for me. No points here.

Three points! Thanks for the interesting submission, and for your participation in the challenge over the last few weeks!

@dimestoretajic:

What a ride.

I may have come into this midway through, but I’ve enjoyed making cards for every single challenge I’ve participated in. Honestly, BDW, thank you so much for creating such a great activity for all of us!

Seeing as how this is the last BDW CFAC ever, I wanted to make the card sufficiently epic. So, why not a card with that very mechanic? I looked it over a few times, and a couple of friends looked it over, and I THINK it’s balanced power wise for the drawbacks? I sure hope so. This is my last chance to impress you!

Thank you again for the Cards from Art Challenge, BDW. I am excited for what we can expect from you in the future!

HOW DID I KNOW IT WAS GOING TO BE YOU THAT DID THIS?

I don’t actually know how I knew, but I just had a weird feeling that you would be one of the ones that would.

1 point for your submission. - Ding! Point! 1 point for not breaking the color pie. - It’s...hard to break the color pie when you’re every color. Perhaps that was your scheme all along? Point! 1 point for not putting something broken on the card. - I reeaally want to dock you here because I dislike Epic, but I can’t exactly call this card broken when you have to pay Progenitus-mana to cast it. And no combination of the effects is too powerful for the cost either, so I suppose you’re good here. Point! 1 point for using proper templating (or at least close to it) - Each ability is properly templated. Point! 1 point for impressing me with a cool design - Cool, and certainly Epic (secretive points if you did that because Epic is literally the company I work for) but I’m not a huge fan of the mechanic itself, so I can’t give you this one.

@custommagiccardswithnonmagiclore:

The art depicts a druid in a trance, feeling deep in tranquil, which is why I use one of the earliest flavor for enchantment destruction.

The idea of price comes from the fact that the druid holds the crow (raven?) with light coming out of its mouth, with slightest faint, the whole trance would be done.

The white part comes from the fact that the abilities have taxing, which is a white thing.

Green also gives you access to slightly-more-powerful enchantment destruction, which this is. In fact, I would call it far too cheap for an enchantment boardwipe that can destroy more enchantment later on. I would want it to be at least 2WG, especially because the set that would want to play this would also have enchantment creatures. I also probably have them pay X where X is the creature’s converted mana cost rather than just say “its mana cost” so there isn’t much fretting for paying the right colors.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@tarniyo:

For this card I wanted to try out something that had the flavor of an old, wise man who lives in the forest - he has a solution for every problem. I thought  a card where you can choose modes best fit that flavor, and escalate is a really fun mechanic i’ve wanted to design around for a while now

This is a solidly-designed card: the first and last abilities are spot-on for the costing. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that ability: Green and White don’t get to copy creatures that aren’t tokens. Green can have other creatures copy it, but it can’t go the other way. 

Now, if you wanted to add Blue to the mana cost, maybe that effect could work, but properly fixing the Escalate cost to reflect three colors would be a bit nightmarish (and it’s no fun if we leave out Blue!). Triple-Hybrid mana might would do the trick, but that’s gonna be pretty small...

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@amtgplayer:

So, basically this is a green Ancestral Recall (aka cheap Harmonize) that demands you to jump through a few hoops. I actually made this card before the challenge, and it was named Summoner’s Quest. It turned out to fit the artwork pretty well, so I just changed the name to fit better.

Quest is an enchantment type with rules baggage (“each triggered ability printed on this card only triggers once”). I decided to make it a subtype instead of an ability so that referring to it is more natural: “Exile target Quest, then return it to the battlefield under your control” instead of “Exile target enchantment with quest…” If I ever want this ability on a creature, I can just have an Enchantment Creature - Quest Human Scout.

I dislike Harmonize being in Green, but this is an execution I can get behind. I love the “activates only once” aspect of this, though I think I would keep the subtype off of creatures because a creature being a “Quest” is a bit awkward to conceptualize. Also, “Enchantment Creature - Quest” already takes up a lot of space:

I don’t think you’ll be printing that.

I do really like the card, though I can imagine costing 2G would be a lot more likely.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@commandtower-solring-go:

The flavour is that an old friend of his had passed away (exiling the creature) but they still remain in contact. I feel that, while it may seem like a very powerful card, getting a creature into your bin before turn 2 is not only hard, but in any deck designed to do it wouldn’t want to them exile it. So I feel there is some balance within that.

I think there are more ways to meet that requirement than you think, and there are also ways to slip this onto the battlefield to get around that trigger. Plus, two-mana card draw engines are just too powerful, even ones with downsides like this.

However, this card did give me an idea for a cool design that’s super close to this, but gets around the pesky cast trigger to exile the creature (I would also bump up the mana cost to at least 1BB because Phyrexian Arena is a heck of a card):

At the beginning of your upkeep, exile target creature card from your graveyard. If that card is exiled this way, draw a card.

Boom. Recycles creatures in your graveyard into cards in your hand, one at a time, once per turn. It’s worded a bit awkwardly to make sure you don’t draw the card if this enchantment didn’t exile it.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@thekillershrub:

Immediately reminded me of Dosan the Falling Leaf. I know this is weird. I know this breaks the fundamental rules of magic. I know this is powerful. I know this causes shenanigans. I know other legends allow you to cast creatures with flash without opponents having access to it. However, I like the design and hope it inspires others.

So now, it’s sort of an anti-Dosan. Interesting. I can imagine the phrase “at your end step” would become very common in a format with this card. I feel like I would want the ability to be completely symmetrical, so you can’t play spells on your own turn, either, but I would love to make this part White and give it flash: imagine jamming it down at your opponent’s upkeep, Silencing them for an entire turn. That’s pretty powerful, and I’d love to see how constructed-worthy that may make this card.

Thanks for the submission! Two points!

@outerspace-messiah:

This card was entirely designed with limited in mind where early creatures can net you some life if your opponent is playing a slower game and 7 mana to draw three late game can be of use as well.

With a druid just chilling in the woods with his animal friends, I thought a flavorful way to have your creatures not attack or block. I went with that over preventing damage your creatures deal because that could lead to serious board stalls if both players happened to have one.

The druid also looks like he’s harmonizing with animals, so I thought that he harmonizes more if there’s more creatures there, hence the life gain. However, that’s a really weak effect for only once on your upkeep, so I had the life gain be every upkeep since you’re open to attacks from your opponent.

And of course there’d have to be a way to get rid of the enchantment, so I added Harmonize as the sac ability as a shoutout to it and a flavorful way to say “I learned a lot through that mediation” as green likes to do.

I personally hate Harmonize in Green: its card advantage is supposed to be tied to creatures or lands, so just getting “pay mana, draw cards” isn’t something Green should do. I’d rather this be a regrowth or maybe make some tokens instead of straight drawing cards, or you could keep the card draw and add Blue to the cost. 

I’m really not sure about the power level of this effect; it could be quite powerful if your opponent isn’t aggressive enough, but roughly two points per creature could be an easy rate to keep up with (depending on how wide you’re going on creatures). My biggest concern is that, if this card is working well, it’s just going to prolong the game in an agonizing way, so that’s something to keep an eye on.