Beacon of Creation

Our competitors have completed another fierce round of tournament design, as we eliminate to our final four. Let’s review the challenge!

Tournament Round 2
We Are Merely Players

We return to Qualifier 3, where we had our designers come up with a mechanic for the word: Courtesy. Our winning version of the mechanic, by perryk, was defined as:

Courtesy – Whenever another player attacks, if they aren’t attacking you, [effect.]

For our second tournament round, you will present to us 5 cards. In those five cards, you will pitch us your version of a Court Intrigue Multiplayer Set, using perryk’s Courtesy mechanic. Additionally, you may include an up-to-250 word blurb to accompany your cards to help sell us on your pitch.

• 5 cards
• At least one card from each rarity (you can choose where to double up on one rarity.)
• No two cards can share a single color identity (You can have a white card and a white+blue card, but not two white cards.)
• At least one card in the submission includes the Courtesy mechanic, as presented. If you only include Courtesy on a single card, then that card can’t be red. (Subsequent cards in your submission with Courtesy can be red.)
• Multiplayer theme set (can be a draft set like Conspiracy, Commander Legends/Masters, a Commander pre-con product, etc.)
• No restrictions on other mechanics used (new and canon both permissible.)
• Card flavoring should be ‘Court Intrigue’ (e.g Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, A Court of Thorns and Roses, A Memory Called Empire, MTG’s Conspiracy Sets, etc.)
• Up to 250 word blurb to accompany your cards, to help sell us your vision of this upcoming product.

You can see all the designer’s submissions by clicking here.

Redbay’s Top Picks!

The Queen’s Ivory Carriage, by Garduu: In Garduu’s proposed “Ballroom” format, you choose two commanders, and you may have any legendary nonland permanent be chosen as a commander. This implementation of a ‘Partner with’ feels elegant, losing a line of unwieldy rules text from the cards, and infinitely modular, offering players many opportunities to pair cards in new ways. Carriage as an Impact Tremors in the command zone offers a steady source of damage for the Spectacle cards in the format, while also potentially offering a dream for a Vehicle-matters deck.

Agent of House Elariel, by Pat: I love the double-down on folks not wanting to attack the player controlling the Agent; the high toughness deathtouch body makes it difficult to attack into, and the trigger is so powerful that I feel incentivized to buddy up with that player to get the reward. The political wheels definitely spin each time this Agent triggers. It’s my favourite Courtesy offering of all the submissions, and only five lines of rules text to do it.

However, neither Garduu nor Pat won this round– let’s talk about the winner of this challenge!

The Darkstar Gala by Provocative!

Kayiu: I think this entry has it all – individually compelling designs, strong returning mechanics that add to the set’s flavor conceit, and a new mechanic that completely changes the texture of the limited format.

Ludos: Yep, this is a banger. The mechanics are well-thought out, the environment looks flavorful and super fun and the starting secret policy allows for all kinds of shenanigans.

Redbay: Two tournament challenge wins in a row! You’re the person to beat this tournament!

You can read the expansive judge commentary by clicking this link.

The Eliminated

Unfortunately, Janahwhamme was unable to join us for this tournament round. With that, we have only one elimination this week. We say goodbye to…

Another tough tournament for Beacon of Creation’s Emdub, we know that we’ll be seeing you for our next season of Design League.

Our semi-final competitors are:

Our semi-final tournament round starts on July 29, 2024, where we will eliminate another two competitors, and get one step closer to establishing our Design League Season 3 Winner!