Dastardly Designs #2: Clowning Around

Card Design Features

SwaggyMcSwagglepants

1 June 2018

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Hello, and welcome back to Darstardly Designs! I’m Swaggy, and today, we’ll be discussing my designs for the Second Challenge in the Great Designer Search. If you want to learn more about this series or catch up on my first set of designs, check out the previous article in the link at the end.

In the second challenge, aptly named “A Circus Act”, which you can see here , the theme of the challenge was to design cards from the Circus-themed plane of Bigtopia. Along with that theme, the designers were given a couple of restrictions:

1. You're going to design eight cards from the 25 card names below. You must use the card names exactly, no tweaking (with one exception listed below).
2. Your cards must mechanically capture the flavor of their title.
3. You must design two cards of each rarity (common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare).
4. You may have no more than three cards be of the same card type.
5. You must use each color at least once.
6. You must make at least one legendary card. For legendary cards, and only legendry cards, you may slightly tweak the name to make it sound legendary.
7. For named keyword mechanics, you are allowed access to all evergreen mechanics and up to one non-evergreen mechanics (keywords and/or ability words). Note that there is no requirement to use named mechanics. Please do not create any new named keyword mechanics.

The card names for this challenge are:

• Acrobatics

• Circus Peanuts

• Circus Tent

• Clown Car

• Contortionist

• Feats of Strength

• Fire Eating

• Flaming Hoop

• Human Cannonball

• Juggling

• Knife Thrower

• Lion Tamer

• Magician

• Plate Spinning

• Ringmaster

• Seltzer Bottle

• Stilts

• Sword Swallowing

• Three Rings

• Tightrope

• Trained Elephant

• Traveling Circus

• Trick Riding

• Trapeze Artist

• Unicycle

When designing for these cards, I first categorized all the tropes of a circus into ally color pairs so I could easily categorize each of the card names into my categories.

For I decided it would be the acts like tightrope, trapeze, and plate spinning since they require balance and finesse.

For I figured they would be acts like knife throwing and magic (like sawing assistants in half and pulling bunnies out of a hat) that were also very finesse and skill oriented, but also incorporated risking bodily injury or something worse.

was the simplest of all of them. Since the Rakdos basically run a demented circus, I just took the concept of deadly stunts and assigned it to this color pair.

and were the two hardest to differentiate for me, since at first, I figured they both revolved around animals. However, the distinction I made between the two is that would be more revolved around the training of animals and having them do cool tricks, and would be focused on strength in general, whether it be a giant man or a giant beast performing on stage.

When I started, my initial idea was to have 5 rivaling circuses on Bigtopia, all oriented around their allied color’s trope, but when I started designing more, I felt like it wasn’t going to be easy to both design cool flavorful cards and incorporate this concept into my designs. I scrapped the theme, but the color pie distinctions were extremely helpful when I was designing my cards. If I hadn’t laid out that conceptual foundation, I think this challenge would’ve resulted in cards that felt like they weren’t all quite right. While it’s not super relevant to the challenge itself, I figured discussing all the processes behind designing these cards is at least somewhat interesting and might be good to review at least for myself in the future.

If I was designing Bigtopia as a large set, I would 100% include these five clashing circuses and all the other ideas I have for this plane in it. I would also make sure the set had a couple more creatures than usual because a circus is all about the performers and audience. Legitimately designing Bigtopia seems like a fun challenge that, if I want to continue a design series after these articles, I would be totally down to try eventually, and I probably would be able to fully convey my ideas from this article across to that set. However, we have 8 cards we need to dive into, so let’s get this circus started!

Circus Peanuts

Instant (Common)

Target creature you control gets +2/+2 until end of turn. If that creature is an Elephant, it also gains trample.

The flavor of this card is that eating the peanuts makes the creature stronger, and since elephants love peanuts, it makes them even stronger. When I saw the name Circus Peanuts, I sat around thinking “Designing a card named Circus Peanuts is going to be impossible.” So I sat down and really tried to push myself into designing circus peanuts, and once it hit me that it could be a combat trick, I thought I hit gold. While I didn’t succeed in making the best version of Circus Peanuts (the only designer who made a card name Circus Peanuts in GDS3 ended up having that be the best card of the entire challenge), I think I made a fairly flavorful, although not extremely exciting, version of Circus Peanuts.

Fire Eating

Instant (Common)

Fire Eating deals 2 damage to target creature you control. When that creature dies this turn, it deals 4 damage to target creature you don’t control.

I like this design a fair bit. I think the flavor is fairly apparent – one of your creatures eats fire, and then when it dies, it burns (or explodes or whatever you want to think) another creature since the fire went out of it. It also has lots of play as either a removal spell that costs you a creature, or maybe a removal spell that triggers when you chump an opponent’s creature, or kind of acts as a straight Instant Deal 4 Damage when you trade creatures and you can get the death trigger. There’s an argument that this card should be an uncommon because of all the complex scenarios and decisions you have when playing this card, but I think its not quite uncommon power level and that having interesting commons makes for interesting games and Limited formats.

Three Rings

Artifact (Uncommon)

When Three Rings enters the battlefield, put an act counter on three nonland permanents target opponent controls.

At the beginning of your opponent’s upkeep, tap a nonland permanent with an act counter on it that hasn’t been tapped by this ability during your opponent’s previous two upkeeps.

I think this card reads a little more complex than it actually plays out – you tap the card of your choice on the first upkeep, then the next of your choice, then the third, and by that point its fairly likely you remember the order. The idea is that only one of your opponent’s cards in each of the three rings can have the spotlight on them. However, I’m not a giant fan of this design – I originally had Lion Tamer in this slot, but I needed an artifact to meet all the requirements, so I finished my midnight design grind with this. Not my favorite, but it serves its role well.

Magician

Creature – Human Wizard (Uncommon)

When Magician enters the battlefield, exile the top card of your library face down.

You may look at cards exiled face down with Magician.

: Reveal a card from your hand, then exile it from your hand face down and shuffle all face down cards exiled with Magician, then choose a card exiled face down with Magician. Target opponent guesses whether the chosen card was revealed this turn. Reveal the chosen card. If they guess wrong, you may cast a face down card exiled with Magician without paying its mana cost. (You may look at cards exiled face down with Magician after you shuffle them)

2/3

I really like this card. While its wordy and complex, it does something really cool and flavorful. It plays this weird game of odds. If you win your first round, you get to cast something for free, which is cool. However, if you lose, in the next round, it really puts your opponent to the test. It's 66% that the card you chose wasn't revealed, but that percentage isn't reeeaaally true. You and your opponent can both calculate the statistics, and it puts outwitting the other opponent to the true test. Additionally, I made it so you could cast any card under Magician over having to choose either the revealed card or a card that wasn't revealed so it makes the guessing game more about outwitting your opponent than "is the chosen card better or worse than the other card?" Overall, I think it would be a super hit-or-miss card with the judges and I have absolutely no idea how they'd react, but this is definitely my favorite card of the set.

Circus Tent

Land (Rare)

When Circus Tent enters the battlefield, put an audience counter on it for each nontoken creature you control.

Whenever a nontoken creature enters the battlefield, put an audience counter on Circus Tent.

: Add to your mana pool

: Add X mana of any one color to your mana pool, where X is the number of audience counters on Circus Tent.

This card was heavily inspired off Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. I wanted to make sure this card wasn’t going to be degenerate in token decks, so I added the nontoken rider to prevent people from making stupid amounts of mana. Ideally, Bigtopia would be a bit more creature dense than the average set, so Circus Tent should get a counter or two more than otherwise. This card also just seems really really good in Commander, and I’d expect it to be a staple in a whole lot of decks.

Feats of Strength

Enchantment (Rare)

When Feats of Strength enters the battlefield, target creature gets +3/+3 and gains trample until end of turn.

At the beginning of your end step, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature that has a greater power or toughness than it did at the start of your turn.

This card might not be rare in power level since it’s basically a sorcery speed combat trick that might get better, but I think if you build a deck around it, it would be a pretty spicy enchantment. Looking at the judge’s reviews, this probably wouldn’t fly so well since it isn’t necessarily “feats” of strength but rather just getting swole. A better name for this card in hindsight might just be “Hitting the Gym” since this card tells a story more of a strength training regiment rather than accomplishing various physically demanding tasks. There’s also two mechanical problems I can think of about this card. First, you can’t play creature and Feats of Strength in the same turn and then have it get a counter at the end of your turn. I’m not sure how to template this card so it would gain a counter, but I’m sure someone can figure it out (please post in the comments if you have an idea!). The other issue is that this card is busted if you drop a lord down (e.g. Benalish Marshal) after you have Feats of Strength out. And while that is really good, I’m not sure if that actually is a downside. That means that this card can fit in a lot of green tribal decks as a way to make all your tiny creatures swole, and I think having a powerful green tribal enchantment with other uses is just cool and fun. Overall, I think if I could’ve overcome the templating issues, I’d be left with a very cool design.

Knife Thrower

Creature – Human Rogue (Mythic)

Menace

When Knife Thrower enters the battlefield, put two knife counters on it.

Knife Thrower gets +1/+0 for each knife counter on it.

Remove a knife counter from Knife Thrower: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature you don’t control.

2/3

This card isn’t overwhelmingly splashy, but it packs one hell of a rate. Maybe it should only have 2 toughness? Anyways, the point (no pun intended) of this card is to slot a black card into my designs. Black, although easily workable in the context of Rakdos, wasn’t really a color that was represented in any of the card names given. Knife Thrower was the only name that really screamed black out of all of them, so I figured I’d have to dedicate a slot to Knife Thrower as my black card. Similarly, the reason it’s mythic is because I had tons of commons, uncommons, and rares, but not that many mythics, so Knife Thrower became destined to be a mythic. And here we are! This sometimes reads as a 2/3 menace for 3 that Disfigures a creature when it enters the battlefield, sometimes as a dude that chips in for damage and throws a counter on an opposing creature to kill it after its been dealt a lot of damage, and sometimes its just a 4/3 beater. Not a whole lot you can ask more out of your black 3 drop.

Ringmaster Bailey

Legendary Creature – Human (Mythic)

Other creatures you control get +2/+2 as long as you control 4 or more nontoken creatures.

Vigilance, Haste.

: Gain control of target creature you don’t control until end of turn. Untap it. It gains haste until end of turn. Activate this ability only on your turn.

3/4

I think I did a solid job in conveying the ringmaster theme here. First off, it’s a big splashy mythic rare, which I feel a ringmaster should be, since it’s the host of the circus. A ringmaster’s value grows with an audience, and I represented through the +2/+2 ability. I think the combination of vigilance and Act of Treason abilities makes for lots of interesting decisions. You can attack with Bailey and then steal a creature, but it won’t be able to attack. However, they’ll be down a blocker and you’ll have a creature to add to your creature count for the +2/+2 bonus. Alternatively, you can steal their best creature and swing with it, but you won’t be able to barrel in with Bailey that turn. I could see the judges wondering why adding those anti-synergistic abilities would be smart, but I think it makes Bailey a much more interesting card overall. In my opinion, this is one of my better designs.

Overall, for this challenge, I certainly think this wasn’t my best performance. Funnily enough, I designed these cards before I designed the tribal cards, so I had less experience around card design with these cards. Looking at the judge’s comments made me very doubtful in most of my designs. However, I think there was one or two people who did worse, but I certainly wouldn’t fault myself if I was on the chopping block this week.

I think the most valuable lesson I learned from hearing the feedback of the contestants was focus intently on all the details in a top-down design. For example, when looking at Feats of Strength for the second time, I realized that my design didn’t actually align that much with what Feats of Strength actually are. I definitely could’ve designed a better version. However, for this series, I don’t want to design a card, realize it’s crap, then scrap it and throw a new design up here. If I think I didn’t do good, I’d rather show it here than constantly attempt to redesign stuff after looking at the judge’s feedback, because every time I design something I could’ve done better and analyze it, I learn a lesson, and I hope I can convey my lessons onto you as a reader.

Well, that’s it for this week! This article is a lot less words and I think a lower quality piece than last weeks. I blame exams for the most of it, although learning HTML to attempt to format this better has been frustrating and tiring as well. I’m going to attempt to keep a consistent schedule on these articles by posting them every Friday, even though at this point, so many challenges have gone up that it’ll be weeks after the next challenge is posted until I can get the article up. However, I’m going to keep trucking through all of these, so bear with me! I promise the quality will increase once I get some time to relax and truly write to my best capabilities.

Also, just as a quick side note, I’m linking this GoFundMe page my friend started just because it would be nice if we got people to help out. One guy in our class has worn flip-flops every day of the year, and we said if he did, we’d get him a pair of Gucci flip flops to celebrate. Right now, he’s having green card issues and might need to move to his country of birth, India. Because of this, we’re really trying to band together and get him these as a send-off gift for him. Nobody is obligated to help out, and I certainly don’t mind if you would rather donate to more charitable causes, but if you want to help us broke high school students out an participate in the most heartfelt meme of the year, just drop a couple bucks and help us make the last couple days of this school year memorable.

If you want to contact me, you can find me on Twitter at @Dustydeckbox, or you can comment below. If you have anything at all to say, please comment! I was really happy reading the comments from last week and it made me motivated and excited to continue this series, so even if it’s just “cool article”, having someone tell me that makes my day that much better. If you ever have any questions on design or what I think about it, always feel free to give me a shout.

Catch me next Thursday (hopefully!) as I attempt to create a cool new mechanic!

Happy Tapping!