Some tough competition here, so I had to kick up my own judging a notch. If I seem a little strict, it's because I basically had to be otherwise we'd be looking at a 7-way tie.
Thanks for giving it your all everyone.
gamma3 Raceway Saboteur - Good variation on the common black removal card that makes sense in the set and lets Black deal with the important artifacts of the set without having to resort to bending the color pie. The flash might seem a bit strong at first glance but you picked a good soft effect - I would be comfortable comparing this to
Jarl of the Forsaken or
Blitz Leech. A great example of how you can make Limited design interesting even with very simple designs.
HvT Detour - Having recently seen a slew of
Floodwaters-type printings in sets (Notably, things like
Into the Void tend to end up at
as I move towards more recent sets, and the ones that do stay at
are sorcery speed or use some other effect like
Read the Tides to be very overcosted - sometimes both), I ended up searching a bit and found that there's precedent for something this efficient at common in
Whiplash Trap. It's likely a small nitpick but the way the printings have trended tells me that WoTC found that bouncing two creatures at instant speed at
(which is realistically what this will do) was a bit too good for limited to be easily draftable in large quantities. The design itself is great but I suspect if this actually went through a playtesting draft it would be suggested to move it down to Sorcery speed or up to
.
gamma3 Sleek Speedster - So something I've been thinking about especially as more of Kaldheim rolls out is "Why not just use keyword counters?" It still accomplishes the whole "Upgrade my ride" type flavor that is present in racing/car mechanic video games and might in fact be even more flexible because modding cars with all sorts of custom parts is a very exciting idea (and Machellovoss could keep keyword counters to Vehicles to limit its complexity). Your argument for speed counters is kind of iffy because while I did mention going fast I didn't and still don't have a logical idea of why going fast magically improves performance (if anything, it should increase the risk, which I feel Crash represented better.) If you'd went for the argument that you wanted to hardcap the complexity of how much you could 'upgrade' a vehicle, I could see it, but I think this mechanic falls a little flat because it wants to represent one concept of racing flavorfully (the racing), but actually represents an entirely different part of racing mechanically (the mechanical parts of a car). I think I would've reacted more favorably to this if they were called "upgrade counters" or "tune up counters" or something that matches the flavor better with the mechanic.
Other than that, this is a pretty straightforward design that makes a good demonstration of all the mechanics at hand.
thaneofglamis Oil-Blade Baron - I know we're in the age of creatures being pushed but even so Black doesn't get 3/1 for 2 mana at common - this kind of efficiency at common is reserved for White (
Daring Skyjek) and more recently Green (
Initiate's Companion). Should be 2/1.
Onto the meat of the card - Sponsorship is a very flavor-heavy mechanic. I ended up checking to see how
players reacted to Soulbond and it has a Storm Scale of 6 - like Soulbond, Sponsorship is very complex and requires tracking, but I think Sponsorship has an even better better flavor connection than Soulbond and would win most players over as a result - i.e. Design wins over development here. I could see this as at least a cycle, and definitely at least a small subset of cards made specifically for limited.
ameisenmeister Slabrider - I was hoping that someone would take the nudge to make combat-matters mechanics and you came and nailed it right on the head. This card pretty much nails everything I wanted out of a Machellovoss common - racers go forward, so they attack, crashing to their doom, etc... The best part is, you could totally put this on Vehicles too!
My only complaint is that if
Careless Celebrant is any indication this is probably too pushed at common even by current pushed-creatures standards - I'm learning a lot about Limited just from doing research to judge this set, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that WoTC is extremely careful about how easily someone can get good creature removal at common. I'd take a cue from
Viashino Pyromancer/
Orcish Hellraiser and reduce this to just hitting players or planeswalkers.
leadfred - As far as 1 mana White 'removal' variants go, I'd say this is pretty fair. It's got slight combat trick vibes as well and I think the end result is a common that I could see being reprinted a lot even outside of this set. You make good use of an effect that doesn't get printed very often.
Welcome to MSE, btw!
thaneofglamis - Pit-Stop Brute - I think it was a smart call to design Pilot support, because I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the fighting in Limited Drafts ended up being over getting a good balance of Pilots and Vehicles, leaving players who struggled to have enough of both. I think the costing here is fair compared to
Lifecraft Cavalry (which is conditional compared to this being guaranteed support) and good on you for considering what happens if players fail to get into the big limited archetypes.
Fermat Rev - I had to really think about this but considering
Vampiric Fury and
Nahiri's Stoneblades basically require you to jump through the hoop of having two creatures anyway, I think this is fair. What I'm unsure about is the haste on top of that, because you don't normally see your average
Thunder Strike variant effectively boosting for +4/+0 and a keyword at common. I
think it would be okay, because unlike the large amount of other pushed cards here this is less likely to influence how easily you can pick off creatures and granting haste isn't as powerful by itself, but I would still consider this a push (but still good) common on average.
foureyesisafish Brightchaser's Engine - I like what's being presented, but I'm not sure I like the design you picked to show it off.
Colorless 2 mana equip 2 for
conditionless first strike is well within the reach of common (
Jousting Lance,
Bladed Pinions,
Sparring Collar) to the point that what first really excited me as a design then made me a little sad when I realized how weak the resulting effect was. I don't think Vehicles should be getting weaker payoffs than their Creature equivalents because a Vehicle is already dependent on a creature (or second substitute card).
I also think this design presentation highlights very well why Speed counters fall apart by saying they want to represent one thing while actually representing another - the upgrade flavor it presents is already covered by Upgrade itself and the need to include it makes what could be cool graceful designs a bit awkward.
One other concern I think with upgrades is that it emphasizes a problem that was created by Equipment (and got solved by Vehicles) - namely, that Equipment tend to swing between being persistent haymakers and aura do-nothings with no real in-between because the not every deck can reliably interact with artifacts but every deck can reliably interact with creatures. I think Upgrades make the problem worse because you end up having to commit a portion of your deck to Upgrades that won't work unless you have a Vehicle
and a creature (or substitute card), which means Upgrades are dead draws on a creature/substitute-heavy hand. There's a lot of knob-tweaking that needs to be done and I feel like as-is I'd rather see this specific version of Upgrades being less about trying to enhance vehicles specifically and more about just giving regular artifacts all sorts of unusual properties.
I think I would've looked on this design much more favorably if it had also said "When upgraded artifact taps, put a speed counter on target permanent." or at least have been powerful enough to compare to similar equipments. Upgrades should've also been usable by both creatures and Vehicles because as-is they take the Equipment problem and make it more awkward by demanding two additional cards to work instead of just one additional card.
gamma3 Steamhulk - Funnily enough, I feel like everything I could say about Steamhulk also applies to Sleek Speedster for the most part. It's a good design, I'm just on the fence about if Speed counters are the right design choice or not.
Fermat - Tome Train - So while I like the effort to be innovative with crash (keyword) I'm not sure I agree with having used the exact same word because I feel like it recklessly disregarded the other Crash (ability word) which was a pretty decent idea in itself. I don't think there's a better word to use so I'll give it a pass but I feel like if a different judge was in my seat you might've lost points for this.
Onto the card itself - so this is bascially a more flexible
Daredevil Dragster that is more expensive in every sense. In that sense, I think it's okay as a design and would pass muster. It plays well with the themes of the set and is a snappy, well thought out response to the many "remove from combat" soft removals other players were designing earlier. I could see this working 12-card cycle of "you may sacrifice ~ when it attacks" vehicles/creatures, with or without the keyword, and makes me think about the potential of the set as a whole, so kudos to you there.
ameisenmeister - Fueled Aggression - Wow, you're just on fire this round, aren't you?
You did a very smart move by introducing Jump-start in a non-Izzet color to show that it could plausibly work this time in every color, and it neatly gives Instants and Sorceries a whole archetype of their own so that they aren't left out of the fun Creatures and Artifacts are having this set. I think this is also an excellent exmaple of a mechanic that would help compensate for the inevitable limited situations of having too many Pilots or too many Vehicles, because you can just discard the excess ones to more relevant Jump-starts and smooth out your plays. Excellent design.
gamma3 - A reversal on designs like
Lookout's Dispersal and
Mystical Dispute where instead of the card costing less, the counter becomes more guaranteed. I think it's an interesting idea but funnily enough for flexibility in both Limited and Standard I can see why WoTC favors the former design - I feel like you ended up having to price the regular mode at a very weak spot to try and balance the other, much better end out and the result is a card which has a very bad use case and a very good use case instead of a slightly bad use case and a slightly good use case. It's a good experiment, but like I've said earlier this judging, I'm learning a lot about limited as I judge all of these designs, haha.
ameisenmeister - Don't really have much to say here - this is a great Crash design and that's about it. You built on your previous demonstration well and show why someone would want to run this mechanic. I think this card is deceptively strong and would go all the way up to Pioneer but it isn't busted or unfair - your opponent has the choice of either blocking it and taking a guaranteed discard, or getting thier hand picked away at as you attack.
gamma3 - I think your steps to experiment with the set were the best overall. You came in early and tried to define a good mechanic, and pretty much all of your designs were solid, but I feel like a lot of what you've made would be tweaked in the design to development handoff for better coherence with future sets or Limited play. I kind of wish Steamhulk was more than "Big vehicle with speed counter mechanic" though - it feels like you could've used that slot to demonstrate speed counters better. An instant, sorcery, or even enchantment, perhaps?
HvT - Good common idea, albeit a little too pushed.
leadfred - Neat removal/combat trick.
Fermat - There's a little push here and a little nitpick there but your resulting designs are ultimately solid and probably would make it straight to print with minimal/no changes. I think your showcased your designs well and they feel like they were paying attention both to the prompt and the other user's designs.
foureyesisafish - I really like the concept of Upgrade but it's very rough and the way it's presented I'm not sure if this is the right set for it. Refine it a bit, maybe use it in some other challenges; don't give up on it.
thaneofglamis - I think you came up with both a solid mechanic and I feel you were also the first to take into consideration the Limited problem of people fighting over Pilots and Vehicles, which is a pretty strong consideration in it's own right.
ameisenmeister - Crash was good but I think your descision to make a non-Izzet Jump-start design is what really cements your lead over everyone else here. Everything you made plays well with the themes of the set, creates good tension with the mechanics involved (a lot of removal spells try to avoid killing stuff, which is quite interesting highlighted against this!), and fills a role.
- No one tried for a Legendary design. You'd think there would be at least one well known racer out there.
- The 'team' aspect wasn't really latched onto, so there was no lore implications, just a more world-building approach of every vague group for themselves.
- No one tried for a big legendary conflict of sorts.
In the end though I honestly think I liked the reuslting approach of worldbuilding the plane and just having mechanically sound designs that worked with each other in a sort of "every vague group for themselves way". You guys reminded me of sets like original Ravnica where the story going on in the plane wasn't always the most important thing and taking in the world all for its own awe had merits of it own. It also really highlighted to me just how much WoTC really tries to tick off the checkboxes of "story focus" cards nowadays and while I get the need to appeal to players wanting that sort of thing it's just nice to not have a set warped around that drive.
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designs.
