Card of the Week Poll #337: The Good Old Days

{Explanation}The first Magic product I ever bought was the Expulsion deck from Eighth Edition. Ravenous Rat made me fall in love with both rats and discarding. I was so hyped when soon after we got Kamigawa with the Nezumi and I'm still planning on getting me some pet rats one day. My excitement of discards has manifested since in a Nekusar and a Locust God commander deck both running rediculous ammonts of wheels. Enough chit-chat, here is my entry:

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Kind of halfway between Confessor and Sangromancer.

{Explanation}Oh gosh, there's soooooo much to choose from. I could post the first card I ever designed, but it'd be too much of a hassle digging it out of my archives. So instead, I'll just post this:

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This design was inspired by MaRo's thoughts on gambling mechanics in Magic, and how they should be implemented.

{Explanation}I started with the blue free deck sample from 2010. It contained Sage Owl and Thieving Magpie. Then later I also added Preordains and Augury Owls to the mix and I just really wanted an owl that did Preordain. That would have made me a happy boy.

And now I don't really care that much for blue anymore, but back then I thought it was the greatest color.

{Explanation}I like alternate win conditions, I like green cards, and I like getting a lot of mana.

{Explanation}oh how young ratto loved Woodland Behemoth, I always wanted something even bigger

{Explanation}I started playing around Prophecy with my older brother's cards from Revised. I probably would have played a card like this one in my Angels and Demons deck.

{Explanation}Most of what was available around my area when I started was Worldwake through New Phyrexia, and Innistrad was just coming out, so oddly enough, a lot of my early impressions of Magic were of various types of horror, most of which had oppressive mechanics to go with the themes. It That Betrays is one of my favorite cards to this day. As much as I like all the stuff they were doing at the time, I understand why they've since strayed away from mechanics like Phyrexian mana, Annihilator, and artifact lands. That said, K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth proves that they're not totally done with that era of mechanics. Either way, I tried to make a design that could have easily fit within that era, but isn't so bad that they might not at least try it today.

{Explanation}It may not seem much, but here's a little backstory on why I would've loved a card like this starting out. I got into magic as a broke high-schooler just after the release of RTR. The first deck I can recall building was a BGx Axebane Guardian defender ramp deck powering out my only mythic at the time: Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker. As awesome as it was, I always wished I could draw and play him more often. So here's my Ravnica-themed, and most importantly affordable, solution.

{Explanation}Based on a combination of WoTC Purple Lore and the Inquest Finori Cards. I started mainly with Time Spiral/Ravnica cards and the idea of unusual mechanics has always appealed to me, especially after I read Paul Sottosani's article on the effort he made to make Purple work as a color. As a younger player I'd have just been happy to see some kind of canonical nod to Purple in a Time Spiral-esque set, so I decided to represent it with a card that constraints that kind of enthusiasm into a more reasonable not-game-disrupting implementation that I prefer in the present day.

{Explanation}I can't remember what kinds of cards i liked when i started playing since it was so long ago, i did one i wish existed now.

{Explanation}The first cards I ever bought were the Starter 2000 set. Back then I really liked the concept of simply smashing in with something use having some sort of evasion Rhox was awesome ) - but not having my attacker available for blocking afterwards was always scary. So for my entry, I wanted it to:

• Be a big beater.
• Be multicolored (because I didn't knew those existet back then).
• Have a new form of green evasion (that didn't exist back then).
• Have vigilance.

And yes, in case you're wondering, my entry has no set symbol - as had none of the Starter 2000 cards except for the fold Rhox). Which is great because it means I don't have to decide whether to use the rarity it would have been at back then (insanely powerful rare) or the rarity it would have nowadays (weak uncommon)