Card of the Day - Gladiatorial School, Slum, Rancid Marsh, and Tincture of Madness

Doublethink arose when my English class was assigned a project on 1984. A friend and I determined that we would make a 1984 set of Magic cards. We got fairly far along before ditching the idea (making a set is a great deal of work) and hooking our fortunes onto another group's work. And by "hooking our fortunes," I mean I worked my ass off for the new group while my set-design partner did jack shit.

We had gotten far enough before ditching to work out the two major themes - doublethink and sacrificing stuff. And by "work out," I mean I worked it out. "We" had also decided that we would introduce five new basic lands. Not land types. Lands.

A Plains by any other name...

Factories were Mountains and Laboratories were Islands. Railroads were Forests because we couldn't think of anything better. I don't remember what we renamed Swamps.

I still have a lot of our card ideas from back then. Nobody knew about Magic Set Editor, so all our cards were on paper. That means no rarity (we were still in the brainstorming phase) and no art. I'll post them in their original text-only form as soon as I re-find them.

But let's get back to doublethink. Actually, let's get back to growing. Shenafu suggested this alternate mechanic in the comments for yesterday's cards. I like growing. It has a more magic-y name and, far more importantly, it has significantly shorter rules text. True, it makes for slightly different rules interactions, but that's no problem. This next card could not be possible using doublethink due to text length, but growing solves that problem.




Rancid Marsh lets you choose when you use its colored-mana-producing ability, which a doublethink card wouldn't. I could change the wording a little so that it worked in the same way, but that looks ugly on the card (it has a fair amount of repeated words) and is not as exciting or useful to the player.




This is something you could never do with doublethink. It just keeps on growing more and more maddening so not even Trusted Advisor can save you. And it never resets. Once the madness count hits seven, there's no going back. Unless you play Naturalize or something. But who does that?

I imagine that this might have some synergy with The Rack. But I could be mistaken.

NOTA BENE: The substance depicted in Tincture of Madness's art is actually a dust of some sort. No tincture is involved. I guess that makes the name an homage or something. Who knows?

Original Art - Gladiatorial School
Original Art - Slum
Original Art - Rancid Marsh
Original Art - Tincture of Madness