GDS2 Design Challenge #3

Steve McAleer

Endor

"Classic Magic creature types rebels and bears fight a mighty empire on a forested plane."

Common Cycle

Imperial Soldier
1W
Creature -- Human Soldier
Prevent all damage CARDNAME would do to legendary creatures.
2/2

Jittering Servitor
U
Artifact Creature -- Construct
0/2

Imperial Officer
1B
Creature -- Human Advisor
CARDNAME cannot block.
2/1

Rebel Commando
1R
Creature -- Human Rebel
Forestwalk
2/1

Cuddly Bear
G
Creature -- Bear
0/1

Uncommon Cycle

Enemy Uniform
1
Artifact -- Equipment
Equipped creature is unblockable.
Whenever the equipped creature deals damage to a player, unattach CARDNAME from it.
Equip 2

Imperial Blaster
2
Artifact -- Equipment
Equipped creature has "Tap: Deal 1 damage to a target chosen at random."
Equip 1

Speeder Bike
3
Artifact -- Equipment
Equipped creature has haste.
Equip 0
Sacrifice Speeder Bike: Destroy target Forest. Speeder Bike deals 5 damage to equipped creature. Play this ability only if Speeder Bike is equipped to an attacking creature.

Laser Sword
4
Artifact -- Equipment
Equipped creatures gets +1/+1 and has "If a spell or ability would target this creature, you may change the target to target creature an opponent controls".
Equip 4

Cross-Winged Fighter
5
Artifact -- Equipment
Equipped creature gains flying and "Tap: This creature deals 500 damage to target creature."
Equip 7

Mythic Rare Cycle

Guard Squadron
3WW
Creature -- Human Soldier
Vigilance
CARDNAME comes into play with 7 +1/+1 counters on it.
Whenever damage would be dealt to CARDNAME, prevent that damage and remove a +1/+1 counter from CARDNAME.
0/0

Jumped Up Farmhand
2UUU
Legendary Creature -- Human Rebel
Protection from Soldiers
U: CARDNAME is unblockable until end of turn.
UU: Target artifact creature gains flying until end of turn.
3/7

The Imperator
2BBB
Legendary Creature -- Human Patriarch
Double strike
BBB: CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature and you gain 3 life, that creature cannot attack this turn.
4/4

Falcon Captain
1R
Legendary Creature -- Human Rogue
First strikeRRR, tap: Flip twelve coins. If they all come up heads, you win the game.
"Never tell me the odds!"
3/2

Log-Team Ambushers
1GGG
Creature -- Bear
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, put six 0/1 green Bear tokens onto the battlefield.
Tap: CARDNAME deals damage equal to the number of Bear creatures you control to target creature.
0/1

Vadd Arther
{W/B}{W/B}{W/B}{W/B}{W/B}
Legendary Artifact Creature -- Human
Tap, sacrifice an artifact: CARDNAME deals damage to target creature or player equal to the sacrificed artifacts mana cost.
BB: Target creature gets -2/-2 until end of turn.
6/5

I love the flavour of George's world, and I really wanted to play up the character of it with my commons. Imperial Soldier particularly highlights the gulf in power between the common creatures of the plane and the god-like omnipotence of the leading characters. Once I started playtesting the cards I found that my previous reticence about the idea of having a white/black pairing as the villainous faction melted away.

For my uncommon cycle, I wanted to emphasise the use of technology in this battle. This is a stark contrast to the heavily nature-themed setting, but a dichotomy that I found really compelling. The numbers are quite large on the Cross-Winged Fighter, but George's story outline already has this blowing up a 2000/2000 indestructible creature in the first set of the block. I guess development might tweak the numbers a bit, or maybe move it up to rare if testing called for it.

I chose to do a cycle of mythic rares for the third part of the task, since this block imparts such importance to the legendary characters. At black we finally get to play with the main antagonist of the set. I wanted Vadd to be a badass that people would be excited to play with, but also needed to weave the underlying theme of redemption in. George gave an awesomely evocative description of him striding into battle, flinging crates before him and wrenching pipes from bunker walls with the power of his mind. I think the first ability manages to encapsulate both this imagery, and also his final sacrifice to vanquish The Imperator at the finale of the story.

The red and blue cards are my attempts to show the ragtag bunch of heroes leading the rebels. The plucky Falcon Captain is always having to escape improbable situations, and I've tried to capture the frankly ludicrous nature of this. Jumped Up Farmhand is my take on the annoying hero, whose great destiny sadly fails to make up for the fact that his mentor had far more charisma and popular appeal. (I notice George reluctantly agreed with this view when he brought him back as a Spirit in the second set!)

For the green mythic, I originally wanted to make the warrior leader to what I envisioned as a race of intelligent native bear-people, inspired by Chewey 'Bacco from the first set (which George has oddly labelled as part IV, am I missing something?). The flavour feedback I received from George was very negative though, and he insisted that the bears should be small and cuddly despite any questions I raised about how appropriate it was to have his Dominia spanning empire brought low by a bunch of 0/1s. I think he has some ideas about merchandising, but this really doesn't sound to me like the kind of thing WotC would get involved in. Probably best to just give him the property rights for it and concentrate on marketing the set...