Janus-uary Challenge Review, pt 1

Juliet and Tim review your submissions for the 4/4 flier challenge. Along the way, they dive deep into what makes a keyword plausible, an ability word worthwhile, and randomness in gameplay fun or unfun. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

This month's challenge standardizes the cost and size: 5 mana, 4/4 flier. From there, our designers could go wherever they want! Plenty of fun designs and great discussion, plus a thorough look into the nature of humanity. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Juliet poses a philsophical question on the nature of identity and gets a crash course on TMNT from turtle-expert Riley Hopkins. In the face of Ooze, does patience or pizza win out? Did you know that Splinter is a cross-universe pun the whole time? Along the way, they design a quartet of fun new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Magic the Gathering cards. Check out Moonshot streams at: https://www.twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork Get even more Moonshot (including more Juliet) at: https://www.patreon.com/moonshotnetwork Watch their Silent Hill f vids too: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIhnR2aPYXj_A6pUjNdq8_1-GY0B-MbL1 Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com

Our usual Following Signposts faces its biggest challenge yet: Lorwyn Eclipse's crazy draft structure! Part traditional set, part hybrid nonsense, with 8 archetypes instead of 5 or 10. Tons of hybrid talk, which is looking to be a key part of the UB small set era. Khord's stuff: https://linktr.ee/Khord22 Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Flip over last week's episode because we've got a whole extra pod on the back! More of your two-sided noncreature cards this week. We've got references to Alpha, 1500s paintings, multiple Rakdos goopy trash cards, and a Battle for the finale. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

This month's challenge asked you to submit double sided cards where neither side is a creature. The star of the show, though, is the bonus challenge, which was to also make the card easy to read! Along the way Juliet talks about reading Tolstoy, Tim asks for a famous web app, and Guff rewrites history. Check out community member Xena's new game, Surreality Check: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2758010/Surreality_Check/ Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Juliet and special guest horror author Nat Silveira talk about what makes horror as a genre work in speculative fiction and Shadowmoor as a setting, then design two different Shadowmoor-themed body-horror cards! You can check out Nat's new book The Chrysalis Body at https://books2read.com/thechrysalisbody or https://lost-signals.itch.io/the-chrysalis-body Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

All this Lorwyn in the air has got Juliet thinking about the works of 1894, which also leads to thoughts of nonviolence. Follow our train of thought to hear a discussion of new player's aversion to combat, the joy of changelings, and the diet of Mirrans. Then we each design a new Lorwyn card building on all we talked about! Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Power Cube is back on Arena and as wild as always. There's lessons to take away from designing high powered cards and formats. Also make sure to stick around for our fun new game of "B or F?" where Peter has to guess whether a card is 60% winrate or 50% winrate in Power Cube data from 17lands. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp

Another hefty design review ep for all of you! Hear our reactions, feedback and insight on the latest crop of submissions. This time, we're getting cards that (mostly...) have the "enters or attacks" titan text. This is the souped up merger of the "value now" and "value later" angles to creature design, and it leads to some powerful cards. Join Beacon of Creation's Discord: https://discord.gg/t88Vpwh Show Notes and Images: https://beaconofcreation.com Intro music by Dee Culp