Card Competition: When Life Gives You Art... [VOTING]

[ddevans96]

Card Design Competition: When Life Gives You Art... [VOTING]

Here's the voting for our latest card competition! Click the Quote tag in each spoiler to go to that card's thread.

Spoiler for andretimpa - Arcane Sigil | Arcane Sigil:

NAME: Arcane Sigil ELEMENT: Time COST: 3 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: When the opponent targets one of your cards with a spell, nullify the spell and return Arcane Sigil to your hand.	NAME: Arcane Sigil ELEMENT: Time COST: 2 TYPE: Permanent ATK|HP: TEXT: When the opponent targets one of your cards with a spell, nullify the spell and return Arcane Sigil to your hand.

ART: andretimpa (team Red Stars, as seen here) IDEA: andretimpa NOTES: A partial protection from CC and PC. Cards mean creatures and spells (I'd have been clearer if I had more card space) Destroying or Stealing a Sigil does not trigger the ability (it doesn't return to hand, even if more than one is on play). Multiple Sigils trigger like salvagers, so only one returns to your hand for each spell played If your hand is full when a sigil activates it is destroyed instead of returning to your hand Mass CC does not trigger any sigils. SERIES:

Spoiler for Basman-1453 - Big Chill | Big Freeze:

NAME: Big Chill ELEMENT: Aether COST: 7 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Freeze all creatures on the field, even immortals. This spell consumes all remaining Aether quanta.	NAME: Big Freeze ELEMENT: Aether COST: 7 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Congeal all creatures on the field, even immortals. This spell consumes all remaining Aether quanta.

ART: artimies7 of Frostbite Borealis IDEA: Basman-1453 NOTES: What's the Big Freeze is about, scientifically? A reliable, if double-edged, mass CC, this spell have a power to freeze entire armies in an instant. Even better, since the universe has expanded past the extent that it's too cold to sustain life, even immaterial units also get to shiver in cold. However, be warned that it will also freeze your own units since that cold also affects your units. Also, since it drains all Aether quanta left for all that expansion of universe, not only combining it with Fractal is tricky, even if you manage to Fractal the unit in question, said unit will bite the frost and be frozen along with your opponent's units. Like all mass CC spells, it also removes invisibility. Note the diction: Big Chill freezes (3 turns), Big Freeze congeals (4 turns). Spoiler for Revision history: v3: Freezes all units, but costs at least 7 | 7 (since it consumes all Aether quanta left) instead of exactly 5 | 5 v2: Costs 5 | 5 , instead of 8 | 8 v1: Original submission SERIES:

Spoiler for jonathancrazyj - Daydreams | Mass Psychosis:

NAME: Daydreams ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 6 (and 1 per turn) TYPE: Permanent: Shield ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: Attacking creatures may act strangely. Absorb per turn.	NAME: Mass Psychosis ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 6 (and 2 per turn) TYPE: Permanent: Shield ATK|HP: TEXT: Shield: Attacking creatures may act strangely. Absorb per turn.

ART: Art belongs to Kakerlake, submitted by Team Ragnarök in Brawl #4 shown here. Spoiler for image: IDEA: jonathancrazyj NOTES: Spoiler for Daydreams: What am I doing here? Spoiler for Mass Psychosis: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? Daydreams Attacking creatures react with the following probability: 50% chance to attack as normal. 40% chance to skip attack. 10% chance to be afflicted by a random effect (as per chaos seed). Mass Psychosis Attacking creatures react with the following probability: 50% chance to attack as normal. 25% chance to attack your opponent. 15% chance to be afflicted by a random effect (as per chaos seed). 10% chance to skip attack. SERIES:

Spoiler for Zblader - Essence Warp | Essence Warp:

NAME: Essence Warp ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target permanent becomes a mark of its element. If a stack is targeted, convert the top three permanents.	NAME: Essence Warp ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 2 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target permanent becomes a mark of its element. If a stack is targeted, convert the top three permanents.

ART: Based on Physsion (Gravity Train Co.)'s work  shown here. IDEA: Zblader NOTES: Today, everything just seems to fall apart. When you change the very essence of something, have you done it better or worse? That's for the thing to decide. ================================================================================ A utility spell with various applications. If an unupped mark matches your mark, it will stack, allowing you to use this to protect pillars from an Earthquake-spamming opponent. This also acts as a soft PC spell that remove key permanents like Shields or Hourglasses, or convert redundant/expiring permanents like Phase Shield or Sundial to sources of quanta. SERIES:

Spoiler for Hidden:

NAME: Essence Warp ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target permanent becomes a mark of its element.	NAME: Essence Warp ELEMENT: Entropy COST: 2 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target permanent becomes a mark of its element.

ART: Based on Physsion (Gravity Train Co.)'s work  shown here. IDEA: Zblader NOTES: Today, everything just seems to fall apart. When you change the very essence of something, have you done it better or worse? That's for the thing to decide. ================================================================================ A utility spell with various applications. If an unupped mark matches your mark, it will stack, allowing you to use this to protect pillars from an Earthquake-spamming opponent. This also acts as a soft PC spell that remove key permanents like Shields or Hourglasses, or convert redundant/expiring permanents like Phase Shield or Sundial to sources of quanta. SERIES:

Spoiler for AD Storm Bolt - Liquify | Deliquesce:

NAME: Liquify ELEMENT: Water COST: 3 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target stacked permanent is split apart, gain for every permanent that was in the stack	NAME: Deliquesce ELEMENT: Water COST: 4 TYPE: Spell ATK|HP: TEXT: Target stacked permanent is split apart, gain for every permanent that was in the stack

ART: Physsion (Gravy Train Co) Spoiler for art: IDEA: AD Storm Bolt NOTES: By split apart, it means that they're all separated into separate permanent slots. Spoiler for example: The opponent has a stack of 5 pillars. You use Liquify on it. It spreads into five permanent slots, each with one pillar. You gain five . Usage: Lock down opponent's permanent slots Gain a large amount of Water quanta by targeting either side Earthquake protection in the early game Added Notes: Any permanents played after the previous stack was spread apart will be placed in a new stack, and all permanents of that kind afterwards are played into that stack. REVISIONS: None

Spoiler for Treldon - Time Dilation | Time Dilation:

NAME: Time Dilation ELEMENT: Gravity COST: 5 TYPE: Spell TEXT: Targets opponent's field. Affected creatures get increasingly delayed (n+1 turns) with each attack	NAME: Time Dilation ELEMENT: Gravity COST: 4 TYPE: Spell TEXT: Targets opponent's field. Affected creatures get increasingly delayed (n+1 turns) with each attack

ART: andretimpa, team Red Stars IDEA: Treldon NOTES: This AoE spell is basically a one shot Turtle Shield, or the opposite of Adrenaline Normal creatures affected by it are delayed for one turn, attack in second, delayed for 2 turns, attack in 5th, etc. Creatures with Adrenaline work the same way. For example a creature that attacks normally 3 times with adrenaline will in T1: attack only on 2ns attack + 2 delay T2: attack on 2nd attack + 3 delay T3: attack on 3rd and 4 delay T4: delayed etc Why in Gravity? Because Time has enough delaying option, and time dilation is caused by the high gravity over the event horizon - to which the art reminds me

Voting timer:

[andretimpa]

Poll missing?

[Higurashi]

While Daydreams | Mass Psychosis is too expensive, it remains the only card here that isn't either OP or UP by concept as a standalone card (the weaker utility cards here could be balanced as abilities). Unfortunately the idea has been done before, but that's hard to avoid. The card is pretty lazy in that it's mostly just Chaos Seed effects and has no new mechanics or thematics (the previously mentioned Chaos Seed shield did the exact same thing in respects to that), but we've seen cards that rely more on solely the RNG concept to achieve an illusion of fun or complexity (Daydreams is very close in effect and power to Dusk Mantle) and again it's the only card here that's balanced. Easy vote for me.

[ZephyrPhantom]

While Daydreams | Mass Psychosis is too expensive, it remains the only card here that isn't either OP or UP by concept as a standalone card (the weaker utility cards here could be balanced as abilities). Unfortunately the idea has been done before, but that's hard to avoid. The card is pretty lazy in that it's mostly just Chaos Seed effects and has no new mechanics or thematics (the previously mentioned Chaos Seed shield did the exact same thing in respects to that), but we've seen cards that rely more on solely the RNG concept to achieve an illusion of fun or complexity (Daydreams is very close in effect and power to Dusk Mantle) and again it's the only card here that's balanced. Easy vote for me.

As both a designer and a contestant, I'd like to ask: what do you feel (in particular) makes the other submissions imbalanced? I can understand if some of the cards are OP or UP, but I'm curious to hear where each lands on the power scale in your opinion.

[Higurashi]

Welp, Arcane Sigil should be obvious. It's a cheaper Quint that doubles as EA and has infinite uses. You rarely face several spells in a turn unless you're against Bonebolt. Well into the OP territory.

Big Chill is made a lot more balanced by draining all , but it remains too strong because of the way it's double-dipping. It's devastating not just against rushes, but also against MA. 7 is a fairly big investment, but with the right timing this is a better Dim Shield because it's unaffected by PC (4 turn Dim with Big Freeze). It's trickier to use than Dim because the "right timing" means you need to know when your opponent is unlikely to play more creatures for a while, but it doesn't really matter because this is in the same element as Dims. MA has 48 turns of stall with this, Dials and Dims that mostly ignores both non-repeatable PC and creature generation (except for Fractal).

Essence Warp is a utility spell that would be alright as an ability. The problem is that you're spending a card slot for a card that mostly helps against Trident. The reason for this is because an EQ deck is usually pretty fast and so you would've probably wanted to draw a defensive option rather than Warp. Before Pends, it would've been a lot better but as it is a control deck can handle an EQ rush when it can generate 3-5 quanta a turn (pillar, pend, tower, upped pend, mark), or just pack Marks of its own if the player has them. Being able to convert other perms is an interesting mechanic, and the card gets points for that in a competition for sure, but it doesn't do much in-game. It won't save you from quanta control because if you were able to play a perm and this spell, you weren't locked down anyway, and if you're locked down or close to it, you can't afford a perm+this.

Liquify is alright in Monotears and arguably a bit more useful than Dry Spell for it, since EQ can spell big trouble for Monotears. In most games it won't do anything beyond an extra card or ability played that turn (making another Nymph Queen), and that's usually not worth spending a card space on.

Time Dilation is a bit confusing because Treldon is saying it's a one-shot Turtle Shield. The way it's explained, it's more like permanent mass-BB that can't be countered, keeps affecting the creatures you originally targeted and becomes several times better in a very short time span. If we ignore the fact that Big Chill is in Aether, Time Dilation is even more OP if you play it when your opponent is unlikely to play many more creatures. Just imagining this, Big Chill and all the other stall cards we already have in a rainbow stall is making me physically nauseous. Even if Big Chill and Time Dilation were perms and forced all rushes to pack repeatable PC, they'd change the meta to where it would be a big gamble to ever bring a rush. As it is they can't be countered because they're spells, which makes it a lot worse.

[andretimpa]

@Higu You are forgetting that Sigil doesn't couter CC/PC from abilities or mass CC, as well as being removed with PC (you can remove it with nightmare, but it is trickier). You are also spending deck space assuming your opponent has control, which is a dead draw against many rushes. Trying to add it to a rush deck also slows it down because you have to dedicate 2-3 card slots. There's a case for it being strong in a control deck though. Maybe a higher casting cost would help balancing it (since you have to cast it again for each use), but I think it would require actual testing.

[Higurashi]

That is most certainly a thing I did not forget, no.

[AD TienzuStorm]

Are contestants meant to vote? Because I'm assuming that we can, but just to make sure.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Are contestants meant to vote? Because I'm assuming that we can, but just to make sure.

I wondered this in my 1st competition - the answer is yes you can vote

[Treldon]

Though it's bad form to vote on yourself

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Though it's bad form to vote on yourself

Really? I wasn't told this?

[Higurashi]

Yeah, most competitions IRL assume contestants vote on themselves. This way it's moot whether you allow participants to vote or not, and if you don't vote on yourself yer kinda dumb.