We reach the thrilling conclusion to our third season of Design League Qualifiers!
Qualifier 6 – Leaving Signs
For this challenge, we offer you five mono-colored canon commons (Warlord’s Elite, Academy Wall, Vampire’s Kiss, Vault Robber, and Mulch.) For the purposes of this challenge, you are to assume that all five cards are present in the same, standard-legal set. Your challenge is:
Design a 2-color uncommon that signals a draft archetype (An āarcunā); that draft archetype will be mechanically inclusive of the two mono-colored commons presented as part of this challenge. For example, if you design a White+Blue uncommon card, then that card would form a draft archetype with Warlordās Elite and Academy Wall.
- One card submission.
- Uncommon rarity only.
- The design is exactly two colors.
- Your design signals a draft archetype; this archetype would include the two mono-colored cards that share a color with your arcun.
- The judges will be primarily evaluating your design on 1) your card design and 2) their ability to understand your intended draft archetype and its playability.
You can see the designs for this challenge, as well as all of the designs made throughout this season of the design league, by clicking here.
You can read the full judge commentary for this challenge by clicking here.
Redbay: Usually I bury the lede here and start with the runners up, but the Qualification Points race is heavily affected by our winner today!
Qualifier 6 – Winner
Ambitious Apprentice by Pat
Tim: A pretty aggro card and appealing to play. Combining a value wall and a face damage card is tough, but I think this does straddle them well enough. Like the classic WU fliers+walls combo but in UB, which I can believe.
Kayiu: Simple, but powerful and compelling. Flying + cheap cost make the scaling here very attractive, it self enables once, and triggering on 2nd draw instead of discard or artifact sac means they synergies this works with are less likely to trap players into sinking resources into this. I don’t have much else to say mechanically – it’s the kind of card that’s easy to comprehend and will quickly disappear from packs, which is the ideal for an arcun. Ironically, I think the one thing that holds this card back for me was what feels like a lack of Ambition – I think with the mechanics being very solid/spike-y, the flavor should’ve rose up to compensate/should’ve been something less obviously straightforward than the Vampire + Wizard = equation here.
Redbay: Congratulations Pat! You were a favourite going into this last challenge to receive a tournament invite, given your high number of qualification points, but you skipped the queue by winning our last qualifier! You’re joining khord, Garduu, perryk, Bradley Rose, and Janah in our Design League Tournament! But who’s joining you? Let’s start with the runner’s up.
Qualifier 6 – Runners Up
Tartyx Trawler by Provocative and Galeb, Improvisational Warlord by Craftedlavaistrue
Ludos, on Tartyx Trawler: I think you’ve nailed it with this one. Perfectly good synergy with the two provided commons without being too on the nose, the card effectively encapsulates the strategy you’re going for. I like how you identified that an archetype like UB Spells would need a potent late-game drop that allows you to outvalue your opponent, securing the win. I could say that this submission feels almost too safe of a play, but thatās probably because it looks like such a believable design that it looks āobviousā, and thatās not easy to do. Excellent job!
Mark on Galeb, Improvisational Warlord: I’m assuming you chose not to make the soldier an artifact creature out of respect for not causing a repetitive game state of attacking in with a 1/1 continually. I think you could’ve gotten away with that, both because there’s not reallly an incentive to do it if it just dies every time unless you have some form of Marionette Apprentice style aristocrat, and that would be very thematic if you got that engine going anyway. The existing form of the card feels solid to me. It sets a dream to aspire to that meshes well with white’s pseudo-convoke and black’s blood, and despite not being the best artifact token producer White could easily make some spellbomb-ish artifacts in the right set, or things like Barbed Spike. Great job.
Redbay: Pat took six Qualification points with them from the available 18, leaving 12 to be distributed amongst the other designers. Let’s see how our designers did.
The Qualification Points Race and Tournament Invites
| Designer | Qual Points |
| Provocative | 8 |
| CryptRat | 7 |
| MonoWhiteBorder | 7 |
| Craftedlavaistrue | 6 |
| Sagebeez | 5 |
| Wobbles | 4 |
| JamesDaltonBell | 3 |
| Qirn | 3 |
| Northern Gun | 3 |
Congratulations, Provocative! You racked up 5 more qualification points in our final qualifier, and surged into the lead in our Qualification Points race. You earned our first qualification point tournament slot!
But wait, where does the final invitation slot go? CryptRat and MonoWhiteBorder both have 7 QPs coming out of the last qualifier! An unprecedented tie!
After much deliberation between myself and the Judges, we have opted to invite both designers to our Design League Tournament!
So, without further adieu, your Design League Tournament Designers!
Khord22
Garduu
perryk
Bradley Rose
Janahwhamme
Pat
Provocative
CryptRat
MonoWhiteBorder
Congratulations! We’re excited to see your designs in the Tournament challenges ahead!
And to all of our participants and judges, a warm thank you for your participation in our Qualifying Challenges throughout this Season of Design League! It has been a treat seeing your work and collaboration throughout this event. We hope you enjoy the upcoming tournament!