General [Contest] Ravnica Reimagined (Entry Closed - Judging Complete!)

Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
In honor of Ravnica Remastered and the festive season, I thought it was about time to organize a contest again.

First Prize: One (1) Ravnica Remastered card delivered to your doorstep *

* I don't wanna go bankrupt, so lets set an upper limit of around €10. I'll have magiccardmarket.eu or channelfireball.com or something ship it to your house (disclaimer: the mail may not actually be delivered to your doorstep), or you can order it yourself (so you don't have to disclose your address to a stranger) and we'll work something out with paypal or a wire transfer.

Anyway, that's right, you could, for example, win a shockland! Who knows, maybe even a retro-frame one, depending on how expensive they're going to turn out. What do you have to do for this prize? "Easy"! Design a new guild mechanic for one of the guilds, and showcase it with three cards, following the rules below,
  • Design a brand new mechanic (keyword or ability word) for one of Ravnica's ten guilds.
  • Design three cards: one common, one uncommon, and one rare or mythic card (art is optional).
  • Two of the cards should be monocolored, one for each of the guild's colors, and the other card should be a gold/hybrid/split card with both of those colors.
  • Two of the cards should feature the new mechanic itself (not reference it, feature it), and the other card should interact favorably with the mechanic in some way (this includes straight up referencing the mechanic, e.g. like Astral Slide does for cycling).
  • Optionally explain your thoughts on why this mechanic would be a good and exciting fit for the guild.
  • No more than two entries per person (that's six cards, three for each submission). If you're going to post more, make sure to label your final entries FINAL1 and FINAL2. If you don't, I will assume your last two entries are your final entries.
For example, say you designed surveil for Dimir, you could submit the following cards.



This variation on scry plays well into {U/B}'s recursion package, and fits well with Dimir's scheming behind the scenes flavor.
  • One common, one uncommon, one mythic: check!
  • One blue card, one black card, one blue-black card: check!
  • Two cards with surveil, and one that triggers whenever you surveil: check!
  • A short insight into your thought process: check!
I'm setting a generous deadline, so people have some time to think of a mechanic, maybe over the Christmas holidays, and because Ravnica Remastered's release date is a while away anyway. After January 7th I will evaluate all submissions and pick the one I like best. Very objective, I know :p Hope you have fun with this one! :)

Edit: I clarified the assignment a bit (without changing it).
 
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Velrun

Velrun

Great!

Will not join the contest but what a great idea to start this on Riptide!

Is this the time you write a guide on how to use Card Conjurer or whatever so that more people can join the competition?
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
I’d love even a “here’s the three basic things you do” on Card Conjurer — I’ve hesitated joining competitions before because card art and images are way more compelling than plain text, so I’d be at a disadvantage (OR I guess we could say “no art on your submissions” to equalize it and avoid any copyright/AI issues?)

just thinking out loud. Excited to design some cards!
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
landofMordor said:
I’d love even a “here’s the three basic things you do” on Card Conjurer — I’ve hesitated joining competitions before because card art and images are way more compelling than plain text, so I’d be at a disadvantage (OR I guess we could say “no art on your submissions” to equalize it and avoid any copyright/AI issues?)

just thinking out loud. Excited to design some cards!
Click to expand...
I love cards with art, but it's definitely not mandatory! I'm looking for designs, not finished product ;)
 
Brad

Brad

landofMordor said:
I’d love even a “here’s the three basic things you do” on Card Conjurer — I’ve hesitated joining competitions before because card art and images are way more compelling than plain text, so I’d be at a disadvantage (OR I guess we could say “no art on your submissions” to equalize it and avoid any copyright/AI issues?)

just thinking out loud. Excited to design some cards!
Click to expand...
You have a hard time finding art? You don't have access to a card maker? Or you don't understand cardconjurer specifically? I'm open to helping.

EDIT: I just had a really good idea for a UB mechanic before I almost immediately realized that it's already Delve.

EDIT EDIT: One entry per person?
 
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Seeker

Seeker

Brad said:
EDIT: I just had a really good idea for a UB mechanic before I almost immediately realized that it's already Delve.
Click to expand...
There's a really good joke to be made here, along the lines of how MaRo has said "we keep designing mechanics and then going, wait, that's just kicker".

(two jokes if you can figure out some sort of Dimir, amnesia, stealing mechanics from other guilds thing, but I can't. because I'm not funny.)
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

New Simic Mechanic: Experiment with [X] (Create a 2/2 green and blue Lizard Mutant creature token, then put an [X] counter on that creature.)

Capture for Study - {1}{U}
Instant (c)
Return target creature to its owner's hand. If it had any counters on it, you may put those counters on target creature.

Monstrous Research - {2}{G}
Sorcery (u)
Choose two:
• Experiment with reach.
• Experiment with trample.
• Put two +1/+1 counters on a creature you control.

The Birthing Ooze — {2}{U}{G}
Legendary Creature - Ooze Mutant (r)
The Birthing Ooze enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter, a flying counter, and a trample counter.
{2}{G/U}: Choose a counter on The Birthing Ooze, then experiment with that counter. Activate only as a sorcery, and only once per turn.
"Oh dear, it's Experiment Kraj all over again."
2/2

...

This is the first mechanic that came to mind. I'm not terribly happy with the designs I picked, and this probably won't be one of my final entries... but "here are all of our weird monsters" is very Simic in my mind.

EDIT: Oh, right, design thoughts — Simic's thing is having a bunch of weird gribblers, and I wanted to go for a token strategy this time around (in an actual set, I imagine that most of their actual creatures are "researchers" who Experiment a bunch). Having a standard token that you get to fiddle with thanks to ability counters seemed like a fun way to achieve that, so that's what I went with.

I briefly toyed with having it be "Experiment with [X] [Y]", with the Y defining an extra creature type (with the base token just being a 2/2 mutant), but I scrapped that after realizing that, while "Experiment with Flying Fish" is goofy fun, stuff like "Experiment with Trample Lizard" or "Experiment with Reach Crab" just feel clunky and awkward. So all the mutants are lizards this time around.

I also had to think pretty hard about how big to make the tokens, especially since the "classic" simic token is a 3/3 Frog Lizard. I ultimately decided that a mechanic that makes 3/3s is really limited in terms of what you can do with it, and I wanted "throw weird mutants at people like we work at Umbrella Pharmaceuticals" to be a core part of your game plan and not a late game thing.
 
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ravnic

ravnic

I think I might have a pretty decent one. I just can't come up with the right word due to my lack of english language knowledge. I am looking for a word, that kinda fits to somebody, a creature in this case, gaining power from corpses in a more or less magical way. Is it okay to ask for this part? Or will I be disqualified?
 
Rusje

Rusje

ravnic said:
I think I might have a pretty decent one. I just can't come up with the right word due to my lack of english language knowledge. I am looking for a word, that kinda fits to somebody, a creature in this case, gaining power from corpses in a more or less magical way. Is it okay to ask for this part? Or will I be disqualified?
Click to expand...
Necromancy? Or a variant thereof. (Or voodoo, but that has nothing to do with corpses).
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
ravnic said:
I think I might have a pretty decent one. I just can't come up with the right word due to my lack of english language knowledge. I am looking for a word, that kinda fits to somebody, a creature in this case, gaining power from corpses in a more or less magical way. Is it okay to ask for this part? Or will I be disqualified?
Click to expand...
Of course you can ask for help! Necropotence would be the most likely term, I think.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

What about Necrophage, which refers to feeding on the flesh of carrion or other animals that are already dead. This is based more on knowledge of Ancient Greek than English, but the point stands.
 
Mown

Mown

profane, unholy, unhallowed, decaying, blood-, corpse-, necro- are all descriptors that more or less could be used to describe what you want. You could also just call it Golgari, since it's kind of an implicit part of their shtick. (Unless you're designing for another guild.)
 
Seeker

Seeker

"Consume" is a word that hasn't been used for a keyword mechanic yet, if you are explicitly looking for one of those.
 
ellogeyen

ellogeyen

So I was thinking about the a mechanism where an ability changes based on the number of creatures that don't share a creature type, like:

"Target creature gets +1/+1 for each creature in your collection/community (Your collection/community consists of all creatures that don't share a creature type)"

But I don't know if this would fit better with Simic (a collection of specimen) Selesnya (a community of different types). Simic feels better mechanically because they often have whack creature types, but Selesnya care more about a large group of creatures, which this mechanic likes. What do you think?
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

New Azorius Mechanic - Obstruct (When you cast a spell, you may spend {W/U}. If you do, put a stun counter on target creature).

Objection! — {2}{W}{W}
Instant (c)
Objection! costs {1} less for each tapped creature your opponents control.
Counter target spell.
"Your honor, as you can see, the defendant failed to apply for an application license..."

Drown In Bureaucracy — {1}{U}
Enchantment (u)
Obstruct (When you cast a spell, you may spend {W/U}. If you do, put a stun counter on target creature)
Artifacts and creatures your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.
"Do you have a permit for those exotic creatures you're importing through that Omenpath?"

Lavinia, Reinstated — {1}{W}{U}
Legendary Creature — Human Soldier (r)
Obstruct
Ward — tap two untapped non-land permanents you control.
You may obstruct any permanent.
"Are you aware of how many laws you're breaking right now? Because I can assure you that the number has gone up."
2/3

---

Azorius's thing is playing hard control, and that's what Obstruct does. It's essentially just a blend of Detain and Extort, using {W/U}'s new evergreen counter. I guarantee you that Lavinia, Reinstated would be absolutely miserable to play against, which is kinda the point.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Mown said:
profane, unholy, unhallowed, decaying, blood-, corpse-, necro- are all descriptors that more or less could be used to describe what you want. You could also just call it Golgari, since it's kind of an implicit part of their shtick. (Unless you're designing for another guild.)
Click to expand...

All of those are neat, but I need a verb. Something like 'this creature explores' or 'target creature connives' :rolleyes:


ellogeyen said:
So I was thinking about the a mechanism where an ability changes based on the number of creatures that don't share a creature type, like:

"Target creature gets +1/+1 for each creature in your collection/community (Your collection/community consists of all creatures that don't share a creature type)"

But I don't know if this would fit better with Simic (a collection of specimen) Selesnya (a community of different types). Simic feels better mechanically because they often have whack creature types, but Selesnya care more about a large group of creatures, which this mechanic likes. What do you think?
Click to expand...

If you word it like this, e.g. Selesnya Guildmage and Elves of the Deep Shadow would only give you a community value of one, right?
 
Gamusino

Gamusino

Hi! Long time lurker here, first time posting. I really enjoy challenges like this, so I tried to design some cards around a mechanic I've been thinking about for a while now. The new mechanic is called Galvanize, an ability keyword that will be followed by a number or X and reads: The next instant or sorcery spell you cast this turn costs {number} less to cast. Here are 3 examples, with the blue spell being a payoff. I used artworks from other cards, that's why they might look familiar:

mnnlvhe.png
jY9yNkB.png
wTg8raN.png



I like the Izzet's storm-big spells playstyle you can get with commanders like Mizzix and I thought this could be a good way to bring it to a limited format, the ability allowing you to cast multiple and bigger spells in a single turn for those cards that care about it like the always present creature in all ravnica set that gets pumped whenever you cast an instant or sorcery.
 
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