Fascinating

I have a new post up at ubercharged.net

It has yet to cause violent controversy. I'm a little disappointed.

Card of the Day - Thrull Prohpet

Original Art

Card of the Day - Corrupt Cadre

Another whitey.

The poll results are flooding in. And by "flooding in" I mean "three people have voted". Shockingly, two have voted for the same thing, so the winner is (given the limited amount of traffic I see here) already pretty much clear. Expect the card around Friday or Saturday.

EDIT: Uh oh. It seems that someone has changed their vote and we no longer have a clear winner. We're all mature people, of course, and can deal with this rationally. At least, that's the hope.

Original Art

Card of the Day - Aberrant Ephemeron, Scourge of the Sky, Path of Purity, Enforcer of Silence, Wall of Bliss, Nelson's Charm, and River Strider

I really shouldn't be messing around with enchantments. You can get into some deep shit with enchantments. I only did this to show you a white card.

Poor white. I am so terrible at making white cards. It's all weenies and pacifism and lifegain. I put lifelink on fucking everything. So unoriginal. All my really cool stuff ends up in blue and black, and all the powerful stuff ends up in green. Red gets the funny cards and random effects. White gets the shaft. Whenever I have cycles, I never start in white. In fact, the white card is usually just a placeholder to make the cycle complete.

White needs some lovin'.




I typically follow the design code of Wizards of the Coast (as dictated by the great Mark Rosewater) as closely as I can. But my orthodoxy falters when it comes to this sort of effect. Wizard code says that you should only make power/toughness alterers that affect your own guys. They claim that cards like Goblin King confuse newbies when they pump up their opponents' goblins as well. They say that cards like that don't work like people think they should. Fair enough. But I cannot support a universal ban. The lovely chaos introduced by Scourge of the Sky and its ilk is one of the things that makes Magic, in my mind at least, so very fun. Mad Aunties have their place, but so too do Goblin Kings.




Tapping enchantments is such a novelty. I do it far more than I should. But for the longest time, Enchantments just sat there, unmoving. You could play an enchantment and - barring any disenchant effects - you would never have to touch it again. Future Sight changed that. True, people had been technically able to tap enchantments since Odyssey, but the enchantments never did it by themselves. Enchantment tapping is a wonderful bit of design space that Wizards has yet to really tap (ahah hah) into. I'm assuming they're saving it for something special. I sure ain't.




Why yes, I can do this. And at common, too. No, I don't care much about the rules issues. Thank you for your concern. Oh, and did I mention that this sucka' used to be a Crocodile? Yep, Crocodiles were a B/W race that worked on the principle of reverse tribal. Instead of making Crocodiles better, they just made everything else worse. Sadly, they suffered the same fate as the Rana - death by lack of art.




Why does the art have nothing to do with the card? Because it's beautiful, that's why. Quite charming, really.




You will never see most of my favorite mechanics. Merciful, Doublethink, Meld, Scatter, Hive, Twitch, Sunder, Staunch, Flickering, Smite, Oblation, Reclaim, Choler, Scour, Preview, Seek, and Renew will all (with perhaps a few exceptions) remain locked away. Some are unnecessarily wordy (Doublethink, Smite) or complicated (Meld, Sunder). Some I'm just not happy with and only keep around for sentimental reasons (Oblation, Scour). Some are not worth a keyword (Twitch, Hive, Scatter). Choler was my favorite until Shadowmoor came out with the untap symbol that did the exact same thing, only better. The rest are just sitting on cards that I don't like that don't have art.
What does this have to do with bliss-baby here? Wall of Bliss is from a set called Rigor. Rigor is a super-small set (<90 cards) that doesn't bother with foolish things like art or legitimate card names. It has a lower power level than my other sets and works with the Rhystic mechanic. Or rather, tries to make it work. Cotton Wall, the basis for Wall of Bliss, is only a 0/4 and doesn't have any of this "art" nonsense. I just slapped the extra toughness and pretty image on it so you'd be impressed. Sorry.




What the hell, dude. This was white's time to shine. What the hell.

Original Art - Aberrant Ephemeron
Original Art - Scourge of the Sky
Original Art - Path of Purity
Original Art - Enforcer of Silence
Original Art - Wall of Bliss
Original Art - Nelson's Charm
Original Art - River Strider

Yes, the ephemeron's art is by that Izzy. Doesn't it feel so legitimate?

Naaaah.

PROBLEM SLEUTH WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

OH GOD OH GOD SEPULCHRITUDE OH GOD

Card of the Day - Thrak, Mudlurk Monarch

Thrak is one of my oldest cards and he has existed in his current form for almost his entire "life". For about a year and a half he has collected dust in my files. Magic Set Editor (the program I use) has a comments section, where you can comment on cards. Thrak has had a comment that says "I'm not sure what this guy's all about" for almost a year. Even now that I'm posting him, I'm still not sure.

Those who look at the Original Art might notice a strange similarity between the name of the artwork and that of His Majesty. But on closer inspection, you will notice that a 'c' separates the two. THE NAMES ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Okay?

Card of the Day - Glutton's Feast

A fun concept I played around with. If you have no other spells, it acts as an overpriced Stream of Life, undesirable to be sure. But if you play it when you've got 4 or so mana, then use that mana to play a spell before manaburn kicks in, you've got a lovely 8-point life gain. Which is... well, it's still bad. Really, this card needs to be either an instant or a cantrip to be playable. It's a junk rare, but you need junk rares and at least it's interesting.

Speaking of which, I was all proud of the mana-pool-matters mechanic. I was going to do so much with it, maybe make it into a theme. I thought it was so original. And then I found out about Glissa. Glissa, I hate you. Your very existence makes me feel unoriginal and stupid. You keep me from completely ignoring Mirrodin Block and pretending it didn't happen, which I very much want to do. You are an elf and that by itself makes me loathe you. Your art is ugly. Oh, and you have first strike when no green creature should ever have that ability. In short, you are an abomination. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

Incidentally, the Glistenhide are a tribe of lizardfolk that live on the foresty borders of the Mudlurk, a massive swamp. Expect a Mudlurk-related card tomorrow.

Original Art