Someone else's bad luck

Wowsers, it's been a while since my last post. Sorry about that.
School's gotten back in swing for me, and I've become a lot more active on the Wizards forums. Also, that Planeswalker creation contest I'd been participating in eventually started dying down, so I kind of lost the desire to keep writing about it.

But I've found a new thing to offset all that. The You Make the Card Forum, a place to show off your designs and get critiques for them, and do likewise for others.

A regular feature of that forum are contests; there's usually at least one daily. The host of the contest picks some sort of theme, and everyone tries their best to make an interesting card to that theme.
I've taken a shine to doing these contests.

My latest contest:


Black miracles

As you may recall, Miracles are one of the new mechanics featured in Avacyn Restored. They allow you to cast powerful effects for a fraction of the normal cost when you draw that card the first time in a turn. Lead designer Mark Rosewater has been trying to get this effect in the game since at least Tempest block (October 1997!).

The miracle cards tended to end up of one of two categories, in my eyes. The first were utility effects; stuff that color does all the time, but at significantly lower costs. Hallowed Burial for 1 mana, Evacuation for 2 mana, and so on.

The second are nostalgia cards. Cards that mimic popular, powerful cards of ages old. Time Walk, Decree of Justice, Wheel of Fortune.

 
These cards are the most exciting because they give newer players a very powerful taste of yesteryear, and they let older players relive some seriously good nostalgia. Good times all around.

In Avacyn Restored, for flavor reasons, these cards weren't allowed in black. Understandable, but I really want to see what Black is capable of doing in this design space, and I don't think I'm the only one.

I'd love to hear what you have to say on the subject and feel free to drop by the forums to join in the fun.

Why Wouldn't You Design That? Volume 1, part 1

Welcome all!

Here's the first part in what I hope will be a recurring series, what I am calling "Why Wouldn't You Design That?", wherein I throw out what I think were some unfortunately missed tropes that the current block could have hit on.
DESIGN

Disclaimer: This article contains custom card designs. If you are a Wizards of the Coast employee you have my full permission to use any designs or ideas within this article without my explicit written consent or prior knowledge, or without giving me any sort of credit. I love this game and I want to help it in any way I can.


Let's get started!

The 13 theme. I think this takes it to the most logical extreme. Let's get it!

One of the greatest flaws of Innistrad is that it had a particularly rich catalog of characters that were built up through all of the style guides, and there is only so much room for legendary creatures in each set. Although, creative always builds up a surplus of story material so they have more examples to draw potential designs from, so this could merely be speaking highly of Innistrad's awesome flavor more than a R&D dropping the ball.

More green miracles. Seriously. I love the two that we have, but every other color got INSANE cards, and all green gets is pump spells. I feel betrayed. ):

Not much to say here. Obvious extensions of several recurring themes.

Push the loner theme in constructed. Many of the loner cards are super interesting, but most of them don't seem quite good enough for constructed, and while I doubt it had what it takes to become top tier, I feel like the theme had an appalling lack of constructed viable edge that many other themes from sets past have had. Plus, come on, look at that card, that's an awesome design and you know it!

There's more to come, but let me know what you think!!!