We’ve reached the penultimate round of Design League Season 2. Our tournament contestants were asked to give us a sampler of cards from a mono-colored, creature-type-matters, Pre-Constructed decks.
You can review the original challenge here.
The judges had this to offer for the challenge:
“An often overlooked aspects of precons is how intuitive they need to be to pilot out of the box. Limiting choice complexity like tutors etc. is essential to making them “plug and play,” and I hope we see designers here take heed of that.” –Kayiu
“Building on kayiu’s point – you want a precon to play “the same”, without playing exactly the same, so that a player can learn and embrace the deck’s strategy as they continue playing with it, without getting bored. Types I could be interested to see a good twist on: Merfolk, Giant, Rogue, Gargoyle, Peasant, Devil, Archer, or Minotaur” –Juliet
You can find each of the submissions from designers Dillon, platypeople, LudosGD, and perryk here.
Tournament Round 3 High Score
LudosGD’s Phoenix Fire
Kayiu: Overall, despite my gripes with the mechanic, this is easily my favorite entry this round – just does such an excellent job of capturing the simple, easy to understand but still splashy and exciting feeling that precons need to have, and pretty much every card in the entry was individually compelling and balanced.
Tim: I like this submission a lot. FTA is front and center in this pack. FTA is pretty wordy compared to Unearth/Escape and doesn’t appear at first read to have many upsides compared to it. On the other hand, the pack fully capitalizes on the peculiarities of FTA and weaves instant/sorcery and graveyards in a satisfying way.
Juliet: Standout card: Visions of Xuatl! Combo potential for R-based Phoenix-centric spell-slinging. The operations of the gameplay here being so straightforward here is a big plus for a card that might be repeated several times a game… unless it gets exiled to a from the ashes ability to get there.
Redbay: Ludos breaks the 0/2 streak set by MonoWhiteBorder for a Designer losing a tournament round that was a throwback to the Qualifier challenge that they had previously won. Good luck in the finals, Ludos!
Tournament Round 3 – Runner Up
platypeople’s Illusory Incursion
Juliet: Cephalids making Illusions! “Invader of Minds” makes me think that these are more phantoms of perception than conjurations of fake-reality, which is a pleasant space to take your illusions to (if much creepier). Whether this is in the style of genjutsu or of mind-flayers, I think the front card being an Illusionist, but not of the tribe Illusion themselves, works better for this particular tribe than it would for almost any other tribe.
Kayiu: Speaking of cool new mechanic – I’m a big fan of Invert, I like how it allows you have early defensive creatures with mostly negligible evasion that can later transform into terrifyingly fast clocks, like Looming Periphery and Dreambender. Feels like a really satisfying play pattern, like a permanent Watercourser, and the expensive costs keep it honest. I enjoy the idea of explicit Invert triggers, and would’ve enjoyed seeing some effects caring about creature stats in some way, but I supposed that’s skirting the pie in monoU.
Tim: This submission lives up to the Illusion creature type. Invert feels a bit color bend-y which cools my overall enthusiasm, and all the flying/unblockable takes away the tension of inverting. I like many of the individual designs!
Redbay: An impressive season across the board. Excited to see you in the finals, platypeople!
You can read the full review here.
The Eliminated
With that, we bid farewell to Dillon and perryk. It was a tough competition throughout and you both contributed excellent designs. We hope you enjoyed the challenge and we’re looking forward to your participation in the next season of Design League.
Watch the Design League Channel in the Beacon of Creation discord for the Final Round, as LudosGD and platypeople battle it out for the Crown of Design League Season 2!