#Taskmage

[appandsoftware1]

TaskMagic’s AI Assistant: Your New Best Web Task Buddy 2023

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[dailyadventureprompts]

Party has to go back to the dungeon they previously cleared. How has the dungeon changed after they killed everything? Have the carrion crawlers & rust monsters moved in to scavenge yet?

In addition to the usual scavengers, the dungeon has seemingly been remade into the lair of a necromancer, skeletons moving about on sentry patrols and also....tidying? Investigating further, the party are shocked when one of these undead servitors comes walking out to them with a heavy box and a letter clutched between it's yellowing teeth. The box is full of treasure, and the letter ( written in a sporadic hand and bearing a number of unpleasant stains) proclaims that the master of the dungeon is delighted to see them again, going on to say that the treasure is theirs to keep, but if they would hear its offer of further "collaboration" it would be delighted to meet with them within.

What the party didn't know going into the dungeon is that they were being followed by a death shroud, a symbiotic scrap of necromancy infused fabric that uses dismembered corpses to build a body of its own. Needing a constant supply of "fresh" parts to keep their corpse-raft from rotting out from beneath them, these creatures frequently attach themselves to bands of sellswords, growing in strength and mass as their bodycount rises. When the party cleared out this dungeon, they ended up leaving behind a buffet of death that their stalker couldn't bring itself to abandon, which ended up being a problem in the long term as it has exhausted its grisly larder long after the party had moved on to distant lands, leaving it with no new source of parts.

Despite being a repulsive gore-orgy under a tarp, the Shroud is cordial and diplomatic, fully aware that it can't go around killing animals or people without risk of getting hacked to bits by other adventurers. To that end, it's wondering if the party would be amenable to working together again, helping it to secure a steady stream of new corpses to retain its current size and power.

Adventure Hooks:

The Shroud has the ability to speak to the dead, and is willing to use this talent to point the party in the direction of caches of hidden wealth or other dungeons and has already stockpiled a number of these leads to use as bargaining chips. Likewise, if the heroes need to get information out of a particular body, the Shroud can ferret information out of them over the course of weeks, shedding light on a villain's plan or the hidden lore of the world. This can be a dark road to travel down, as the party may stop considering the well being of their captives if they need to perform an interrogation.

Like many exotic pets, the logistics of keeping the Shroud may prove difficult. If they're not going to take it with them (because that will end badly at the very first bordercrossing or city gate) they'll need to find it a lair secret enough to avoid detection but central enough that they can easily bring it bodies. This is likely to get your party thinking like low level villains, and I encourage you to let them run when it comes to discovering their new evil lair.

Already boasting a spark of necromantic talent, the Shroud has an interest in developing its magical abilities, growing in power without needing to grow endlessly in size. By offering it the remains of spellcasters, the shroud will be able to piece together the basics the arcane arts, becoming someone the party can rely upon for magical services. At level appropriate intervals the Shroud will reward the party with gifts to help in the recovery of bodies: of a wand of gentle repose, a bag of holding, and eventually a portable hole.

Adventurers are usually given quite a bit of leeway when it comes to acting strange, but getting caught once too often transporting bodies will have the party drawing the attention of the local authorities, in all likelyhood whatever temple in the region usually keeps an eye out for would-be necromancers. These inquisitors will observe the party's activities then choose one of them to single out and interrogate before questioning them (possibly helping to explain a player's absence one session) before swooping in and throwing the adventurers in a warded cell for further interrogation.

Art and creature stats

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Pyretic Ritual by Svetlin Velinov

[phi8]

Inko d’Cannith

A few months ago, I joined the last leg of an Eberron Adventurer's League campaign with this character. He's human with the Mark of Making and a War Wizard, an agent for House Cannith. He's sort of a taskmage, but he has a very artistic approach to his magic. Very fun (and complicated) to play a wizard when they can cast lvl9 spells :p

The gimmick I worked with here is that he doesn't have a spellbook, but instead transcribes his spells on his skin like tattoos. For each spell I took, I also prepared a little description on how the tattoo looked and how it would come to live or otherwise activate.

[mowu-moment]

unless we get a heehee sneak peek in ONE (like jaya ballard taskmage) heeeeeere is my idea of what a battle is

it's like a planeswalker (but with 'victory counters' or some shit), but all players can attack into it. if its controller hits it, it gains that many 'victory counters'. if an opponent does, it loses that many. there's like static effects that depend on how many 'victory counters' it has (similarly scaled to planeswalker levels)

i'll make a fakecard illustrating my idea when i get the chance (tonight hopefully)

[inventors-fair]

That New New: Mechanic entries pt. 2 ~

@fractured-infinity — Dwarven Sword Scholar @ghoulcalculator64 — Menial Taskmage @glassbass — Astolpan Nurturer @gollumni — Sapsucker Butterfly @grornt — Havoc Hammer @helloijustreadyourpost — Gruul Ragestoker @hiygamer — Loyal Bodyguard @horsecrash — Firewall Cracking

[5ecardaday]

I'm confused... Jaya Ballard is an Int-based Sorcerer who also has innate spellcasting? I'm not well-versed in MTG lore but I'd be curious to find out the reasons for this.

This is a great question anon, and I’m happy to answer it. So in MtG lore, planeswalkers all have very unique spellcasting abilities that vary depending on the planeswalker. Because that spellcasting comes with being a planeswalker, I give every planeswalker I make some level of innate spellcasting. Some, like Chandra (who was born a pyromancer rather than trained to be one), have even more innate spellcasting than just the kind given to them by their spark,

However, a lot of planeswalkers (but not all!) are also traditional spellcasters, such as Jace, Jaya, Nicol Bolas, etc. So like Jaya, they get innate spellcasting from their status as a ‘walker, but also get regular spellcasting from having learned and trained to cast those spells (and if you’re curious, Jaya is a taskmage, which is a spellcaster that quits their schooling early on and just focuses on mastering a few basic but powerful spells).

[vorthosjay]

Is there a "way" that people learn spells in the Multiverse, or does it depend on the situation and/or color? Are there trends, or is it truly individual?

You need to have an affinity for magic, first and foremost (let’s not get into more complicated topics like Avacynian magic). In general, your affinity will be for a color of magic, but also for a class of magic. Not all red mages are the same - Chandra is a natural pyromancer, while Koth is a natural geomancer, despite both being red mages.

Then, you need to learn to use that power. There are a whole host of ways to do that. Maybe you’re self-taught, you just keep experimenting with whatever comes naturally. You could be a taskmage or a spellshaper, where you learn only a small number of spells that you focus on. You could find a master to take you as an apprentice, or maybe you join some sort of tradition, like a Druidic Order. There might be some sort of school or academy you could join. All of these are viable ways to learn spellcraft.

There’s no one path, but the most important part of learning to master spells (or to create new ones) is to experiment and practice. That knowledge is then passed down, either to an apprentice, through spell books, through a school, or through a magical tradition.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Merchant:  Taris of Fourcorners and his avian assistant, Flyt

I know I left that codex around here somewhere. Flyt, remind me to organize all this mess.... sometime after I finish those translations.... or after we finish the Mezlat Commission... 

Setup:  Out for a day on the town, the party is sought out by a tittering bird who harasses them until they enter (read: break into)  a seemingly closed bookshop in the nicer end of the market.  The space inside is far larger than the cramped storefront might alow, and is not only full of a library’s worth of volumes but also workshops and numerous defenses to prevent such an incursion.  In the center of this arcane maze the party finds a reedy wizard who’s spent the past two days buried under his immense collection of books. 

This accident prone arcanist is Taris, a knowledge seeker who realized that the easiest way to afford all the rare tomes and materials required for his research was to start getting other people to pay for it, hiring himself out as a taskmage and convincing his patrons that his particular obsession of the moment was the key to their ills.  

As it turned out, the patrons were lining up to have their problems magic’d away, and soon Taris found himself buried ( literally and figuratively) under his workload. 

Wares & Services: 

Cantrip Curios: the Mainstay of Taris’s magical trade is placing minor enchantments on objects to make the life of their bearers easier. Brooms that do the sweeping up, kettles that fill and boil when commanded without need of flame, keys that return to the hand when needed. While he’s happy to sell to whosever buying, Taris’s desire to expand and experiment means that he’ll pay the party richly if they bring him other such objects that he can backwards engineer, providing a great place to sell early game loot. 

Bookworm for hire: have an ancient manuscript that needs translating? Obscure prophecy that needs to be cross-referenced with different historical accounts?... is the party solely made out of dumb bruisers and overdramatic fops who can’t be bothered to do their own research? Taris is available to do the party’s homework for them, and has a %90 greater chance of detecting whether a work happens to be cursed... %85 if it’s REALLY interesting.  

Erstwhile Enchanter: In addition to dealing in a sizeable collection of magical items both obtained and self made, Taris offers to make or upgrade specialty enchantments on items for high paying customers (or people that he owes a favor).  Often booked up for weeks, the mage is sometimes willing to kick certain projects to the top of the queue if the magic is particularly interesting or the pay is worth the inevitable heckling. Though this favoritism may prove double sided, when one of the party hands over their signature weapon for a tuneup only to be repeatedly put off after some noble decides to browbeat the young man with a new order.  

[dailyadventureprompts]

Ally:  Relv Abbasi, Steward of the Tangled Palace  

“ A little bird told me you were having a problem and that I could help. No, really, a sparrow saw how badly you and your friends messed up and is guilting me into helping you. Lets get this mess dealt with soon, it got all its little feathery friends together and I won’t be able to get any work done if they keep tweeting at me all day.”

Setup:  What gets lost in all that "speaks for the trees" stereotyping is that druids serve a vital purpose for any settlement that lives close to nature, whether it be a town on the edge of the forest or a frontier desert settlement. Mortals are fragile creatures compared to the destructive power of nature, and the fragile societies we built are easily brought to ruin when the natural rhythms upon which we depend are knocked out of balance. Druids are Emissaries between the needs of people and the environment that sustain them, and work to prevent oncoming droughts and field blights as much as they do overhunting and the reckless clearing of woodland. 

None of these responsibilities weigh more heavily than on young Relv Abbasi, an aggravated and overworked scholar of the natural world who had a whole kingdom’s worth of obligations heaped upon his shoulders when several years ago the elven archdruid he was apprenticing under was murdered by a rival, leaving Relv to pick up the pieces and carry on the work of ensuring that the land and the people who live upon it don’t end up destroying one another. 

Forced into near constant activity as he heads off one crisis just in time to circumvent another, Relv works tirelessly to uncover the centuries of wisdom and primal lore stolen by his mentor’s murder, his work largely unseen and unappreciated by those of more civilized lands to whom the young scholar seems nothing more than a mystical eccentric. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The party is likely to meet Relv when seeking out a healer, cursebreaker, or authority on the natural world, after hearing tell of the traveling sage from nearby townsfolk. Druid Abbasi is likely to help them with no charge and only a little snark, but is unlikely to let them leave his care without doling out a share of his own troubles upon them. Would they mind looking into those livestock disappearances in the town one stop over?, what about the drumming noise coming from the old fort in the woods?  There’s an old well in some village ruins nearby that people keep getting lost down, and a bear friend of his was recently ousted from the forest cairn that was her home by some rather rude individuals, could they perhaps have a word on her behalf? Satisfying these delegated obligations are keys to earning Relv’s trust, as well as freeing up more of his time to deal with some of their responsibilities. 

Before he was a druid, Relv was the eldest daughter of a pair of out of touch but loving minor nobles who wondered why their child spent so much time sneaking out of their home to wander the woods “in disguise”. Concerned both with their social standing and with their child’s flighty nature, the couple arranged Relv’s betrothal to the son of an ambitious noble family who’s lands bordered their own. Relv wanted nothing to do with this arrangement and fled to the wilds, but the family of his “jilted” suitor peruses him to this day, eager to acquire the Abbasi lands and integrate them into their own holdings. The players are likely to encounter bounty notices looking for a woman vaguely of Relv’s description, as well as meet with a few hunters paid off by the spouse’s family looking to drag Abbasi back to the altar whether he likes it or not. 

On the edge of the hinterlands there’s an abandoned fortress,  large enough to host a great army and once sturdy enough to weather any siege, today it sits empty and crumbling before an encompassing tide of green. This is the Tangled Palace, once the seat of power for one of the land’s petty kings, and now a lair for a great and creeping evil that desperately wishes to spread to the outer world. Relv’s foremost duty is keeping this evil at bay, but with so many other responsibilities weighing him down, his attention is split between this great tasks and a thousand other crises demanding his attention. 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: The Biomancer’s Bounty

“It all started with that damned eye, sold it to him a month ago and now I see it staring back at me from the face of the thing making a meal of my neighborhood. I’ll tell you if I live through this, that egghead alchemist is going to have some explaining to do!” 

Adventure Hooks: 

There’s word going around among the mercenaries and hunters in the realm, a mage in a prosperous nearby settlement that’ll pay top gold for select monster parts: Claws, poison glands, eyes, “Anything interesting”, with even greater bounties for select cuts from rare creatures. Hungry for any additional income streams, many of these adventuring bands have already received payment for dripping, freshy harvested donations. 

In addition to paying for the retrieval of particular monster parts, this biomancer: Vitor Osmos also works as a doctor among the town’s populace treating their various illnesses and even outfitting amputees with new, alien replacements. An unusual figure to be sure, but a dedicated healer should the party ever need some surgeoning. 

Though he has little idea of where they may be obtained, Vitor’s desire for such rarities as basilisk bonemarrow or the optical nerves of beholders means he’s willing to help equip a party’s hunting expedition should they bring him the prize he seeks. In addition to equipping the party with the tools and training required to properly harvest the materials in question, the biomancer will also supply them with countermeasures to their quarry’s primary offensive abilities: anti petrification pills, countervenoms, hypnosis blockers, and the like. 

By SHEER CONINCIDENCE monsters have begun to appear in the town’s canal systems over the past few months, mutant creatures with diverse abilities that seem better suited to fighting than actually surviving in nature. The town watch has done its best fending off the first few of these attacks, but each creature seems more dangerous than the last, and no two fight the same. Perhaps some now professional monster hunters who just so happened to be in the area could help investigate this problem.  

Setup: When it comes to manipulating the flesh of living beings, there is perhaps no one alive to day with a greater talent than Vitor Osmos. A scholar who’s used his extended high-elf lifespan to the fullest in the pursuit of nature’s secrets, plundering her archives for every adaptation and genetic quirk that might give his creations a leg up in the evolutionary ladder. He is also, supprisingly, an arms dealer: using his genius to create warbeasts specifically bred to overcome the limitations of traditional soldiers in a variety of conflict scenarios.   Osmos has these past few years been retained by the local nobility for aid in an inevitable border conflict, and has used their funding to equip a sizeable labratory and retain the services of various gatherers ( such as the party). 

Boredom never suited the biomancer and as the months stretch on with no opportunity arising to test his creations in the laboratory of war, Osmos has moved to dabbling with increasingly more elaborate creations the way a chess-master might seek increasingly elaborate and esoteric games to keep his skills sharp. These projects have begun to crowd his lab, the chaos occasionally allowing one specimen to every so often escape from captivity and grow to size in the city’s underbelly. 

Further Adventures: 

Vitor will be honestly relived if the party tracks the monsters rampaging through the city back to him, as it means he can circumvent the awkward question of asking them to help track down his rogue experiments and keep things underwraps. To him, some “mistakes” are to be expected when pursuing evolution, and as long as the party is around to help manage these monstrous blunders, he can continue his work unabated. If they agree, the party will be called in whenever Vitor has had an escapee, and paid handsomely for each monster they slay. These creatures will grow in size and power the longer the biomancer is able to continue his work, and the party may eventually find themselves in a dutch-dam scenario, but with kaiju in the place of the oncoming sea. 

Characters that develop a working relationship with Vitor can also be paid in grafts, biomagic enhancements to their bodies that grant them extreme hardiness, extra senses, or minor versions of monster’s signature abilities. Such upgrades may have a party seeking out monsters to fight just for the prospect of harvesting their mutagens and growing yet stronger. 

Interrupting the biomancer’s work, or outright killing him may stir up more trouble than the party first imagines. For one, a showdown in the laboratory is likely to see many of the mutagenic specimens escape into the town and surrounding wilderness, creating a lot of work for the party, in addition to angering the noble patrons who recruited Vitor in the first place. Following that, when conflict DOES finally come, the party will have robbed their homeland of important weapons against the enemy. 

The Biomancer once had another lab, far to the south, located on the edge of a dense rainforest where the diversity of animal and monster species provided no end of variety for his experiments. This was during Vitor’s rebellious “mad scientist” phase of youth, and so he was eventually forced to abandon this lair when his creations grew too volatile to control.  The highelf has mellowed with a few centuries of age under his belt, happy to doctor to the sick as a hobby instead of pursuing world domination, but he may need the party to take a quick jaunt across the continent to retrieve something he requires to prevent the rampage of yet another magnum opus

[dailyadventureprompts]

Patron: Lady Dione

Adventure Hooks: 

Having reached a new town and seeking out some magical services, the party is referred to a reclusive noblewoman locally famous for her wisdom and skill with the arcane. She hosts the party graciously, but there is an unshakable sense that there is something oddly distant about her. Later, the party is approached by a grizzled monsterhunter, who asks prying questions about their time in the lady’s presence. 

A thief ( possibly a party member) is tasked by their fence or guild to sneak into the manor house of a toff rumored to have a grand cache of valuable magical items. What they stumble across during their burglary drives them half mad with terror, and has them fleeing into the town’s darkest recesses in the hopes of finding some place to hide....though hide from what? that’s the question. 

After raiding a particularly notable ruin once belonging to a necromancer, alchemist, or other fool who attempted to cheat the mortal coil, the party receives a rather formal invitation for tea in a nearby town. Should they accept, they’ll meet with a sagacious elvan woman in her middle years very interested in their recent discoveries. Teatime may however be spoiled when one of the players spies the woman’s ghastly reflection in the silverwear out of the corner of their eye. 

Having kept up a long correspondence with another scholar of magic, the party’s wizard ally is concerned when letters from their pen-pale abruptly cease. Occupied with the matters of magic, they send the party to investigate, only for them to discover the second scholar’s abode ransacked and partially burned. Sifting through the rubble reveals a concealed locket, one that calls to the heroes with subtle whispering pleas. 

Setup: An introverted litch has grown dissatisfied with the numb existence of undeath and seeks the party’s aid in returning herself to life. In exchange for them doing the leg-work, she’s willing to lend her considerable arcane acumen to their personal cause.  Will the party trust this seemingly innocent corpse, or does her calm exterior hide dark machinations in keeping with her unnatural nature?

Background: She was always a scholar,  abstaining from the momentary pleasures of life to pursue her dedication to gathering knowledge .  As her life of self study and quiet breakthroughs came to a close, she sought the eternal  existence of litchdom in order to continue pursuits. It was the only rational decision, and with a few years of careful preparation she managed to transition into an undying state without sundering her soul or sacrificing any innocents, a distinction failed by most other litches in their mad dash for immortality. 

She followed up her transformation of mortality with one of identity, leaving the tiny hermitage she’d lived in most of her life and presenting herself to the local aristocracy as helpful expert on the esoteric, glamoring herself as an elf to explain her longevity. A few decades of helping to alleviating arcane mishaps  later, her new persona of “Lady Dione” was a pillar of the community and a trusted voice among the magical intelligentsia.  

Goals and Schemes: 

Knowing that few look favorably on the undead, Lady Dione fears discovery, preferring to keep to herself and cultivating a reputation as a helpful if eccentric shut in. She avoids powerful mages or high level social gatherings, as these are both likely to possess wards and foils for the sort of illusions she uses to conceal her true nature.  Her fellows and Patrons have learned to respect her odd behavior, communicating mainly through letters or visiting her in her quaint little manor. 

While two centuries of learning and discovery have nourished Dione’s mind, she has long grown nostalgic for human pleasures: The tickle of sunlight on her cheek, the eating and pleasant digestion of a meal, getting stupidly drunk, and even the morally instructive hangover that would follow. She longs for these things and to leave the dust and glass existence for another time. 

To this end, Dione persues the knowledge of those who claim to be able to provide eternal life, primarily alchemists and holy men, though perhaps counter intuitively attempting to aquire such knowledge subtly, after their deaths. She has long shied away from the magic of fiends and other such ilk, knowing that any immortality granted by such means is liable to carry a horrid cost.  

Boons and rewards: 

Aligning themselves with Lady Dione gets the party access to her services as a taskmage, along with her vast stores of knowledge, and the extensive mid level political connections she’s cultivated over her two centuries as a lich. Acting has her gobetweens can open many doors for them, as it seems many learned individuals and noble families owe the reclusive corpse for some essential windfall in their past. 

Lady Dione’s manor is largely empty, staffed mostly by arcane servants serviced by those few mortals known to be able to look the other way. Should they work their way into her good favor, the party shall be invited to stay with the Sage, allowed to take up permanent residence in the guest rooms and have full run of the estate save for her private laboratories. 

[i-am-the-one-who-wololoes]

I'll add one thing: you also have to remember what the judge said XD I have a terrible memory, so I have to write down things that I need to remember. If I don't do that, goodbye information.

Mecha Magna Serpent + Weld: Ohh, a mutate variant. Complicated. Really great for rules lovers.

Toiling Graverobber + Desecrate: I agree with the commentary.

Chessmaster's Ploy + Stratagem: I agree that discouraging people from attacking is a bad thing. On the other hand, I like the decision tension this card gives to the caster. If you want the "less strong" effect, you need to cast it BEFORE the opponent attacks, which is usually not what you want with instants that can change the sort of the attacking phase.

Runamap Scrounger + Nomadic: I agree with the commentary, cool mechanic.

Jukai Shrinekeeper: + Arcana: Hm. This could have been an effect by itself on a creature card, not a new mechanic. Yeah, I think that's what does not convince me about it.

Burrowing Badger + Dig: CUTE. I agree with the commentary.

Dwarven School Scolar + Legacy: It's a nice mechanic, I like it. It's going to have so many memory problems that come with it, though, I think.

Menial Taskmage + Destine: I agree with the commentary.

Sapsucker Butterfly + Cocoon: First, amazing art. I have to sadly agree with the commentary, but I'm also the kind of player who would LOVE to play these cards. A never ending value engine? HELL YEAH!

Gruul Ragestoker + Fury counters: I agree with the commentary.

Loyal Bodyguard + Embodiment: I agree with the commentary.

Starfall Incursion + Awesome: I agree with the commentary.

Hurried Researcher + Burst: Ok, let's see if I can talk about some "bad" things before reading the commentary. Probably I should have created a card where the tension between having it as a blocker and activating the ability would have been stronger. Like a 3/6 creature that says T: Draw 2 cards, then discard a card, idk. And second thing, this ability is a BIT without much room for diversity. Ok, yeah, I definitely understand.

Sunbloom Eternal + Verdant: for a second, when I saw this in the general presentation post, I thought that someone simply submitted a forest and laughed so hard (in a positive way.) My bad. I agree with the commentary.

Runaway Tank + Autopilot: I'll add one thing to the commentary. It might do nothing, but this is a free artifact sac outlet for just 2.

Soul of Winds + Apparition: An evoke variant. I don't have a problem with blinking/flickering being strong with this, tbh. I like it.

Marshal Warrior + type counters: I have nothing to say tbh, I'm neutral on this one. It can be neat.

Coppershell Conduit + Monument: What a nice idea!

Arvin, Will of the Masses + Populist: I think it's a neat mechanic, it makes sense.

The Mire-Scale Terror + Grow: it sounds like a postulate of some kind. "The Mire-Scale hypotesis". I love it. Layers are evil though. I love them. I agree with the commentary.

Fulguration Helix + Imbue: I agree with the commentary.

Cursed Revolver + Ammo N: It's interesting that you can have UP to N counters on the card. Weird. Huh.

Cloven Chevalier + Castle: I love it. I love to make a fool out of my opponents and trick them (ethically) and beat them that way.

Tavern Strummer + Enthrall N: Uhhh, the fact that the steal could be multiple turns long is a red flag, on such a low MV card.

Rock the Boat + Whirl: You went face first in with the wordplay and just continued to milk it and I love that. I... have to take responsability for the timing on the ability. I'm not sure someone else also suggested it, but I said that it was strange for the ability to make the card be able to be played for longer than the moment you saw it going down the bin. It made cast choices too easy, to me. I'm sorry :(

New Mechanic Commentary: Tweaks and Thoughts

This is gonna be a fun week. Also, I’m going to try to actually truncate things a little bit. There’s no particular reason for it, but I just feel that I get a little lost writing commentary sometimes, and I’d like to hone in on these cards and really talk about presentation, execution, and intention. (EDIT: I did not truncate things. Turns out, that’s harder than just saying what I’m thinking.)

What works? What doesn’t work? What’s the game plan? What’s the purpose? I think some of the strongest mechanics this week, for me, were the ones that were focused and that I could imagine a focus with. Generalities are fine, but we have to keep in mind the fact that different decks can care about different mechanics and never the twain shall meet, even in limited.

And that’s a hard concept! Folks, I don’t know if I’ve said it, but making good cards is hard as hell. You’re all doing superb work. Keep it up.

Two big things:

If you truly want to improve your card-making skills, read through the commentary every week. Seriously, if you’ve ever been frustrated by that, consider what other improvements can be made. Consider the scope of what the judges are asking, and see what you agree/disagree with, new angles to consider. Broadening horizons is the key to learning.

And two, presentation still matters, not only in cleanliness, but also in the card you choose to present. What cards are you submitting, and why? What does this mechanic do, and what would get people excited? Not just in a competitive way, but also in an understanding way. How could you present a card in a manner that shows that this mechanic can do new and exciting things? That…didn’t always land this week.

Judge Picks are cards I want to gush about for some reason that didn’t make the cut. Y’all know how it is.

Let’s get to it:

Continua a leggere