A Mel's Musings

One of my favorite recent examples of a card design dripping with flavor, Three Bowls of Porridge. Each of its modes correlates with one of Goldilocks and the Three Bears bowls of porridge! Dealing damage for too hot, tapping a creature for too cold, and the standard food lifegain for just right!

17.03.2025 01:49 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Here's Smiting Helix! A beautiful showcase of how the color pie works in Magic. An effect that can be printed in mono black can also be printed in red white, but only if those two colors are together! As such, this card would also work just as well if it were a boros card you can flashback for black

12.03.2025 02:20 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

I ACTUALLY JUST STRAIGHT UP FORGOT I MADE THIS
I'll make a new post shortly, I still have tons of cards I want to talk about!

12.03.2025 02:17 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The entire cycle of these lands are absolutely sublime. They are by far some of the best budget and draft land cycles ever printed. What I love the most about them, however, is that the cycling cost allows you to tell at a glance what land types the land fetches. It's really intuitive!

06.02.2025 05:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

And to play off of yesterday's post, here's a card that targets that normally wouldn't! By requiring a target, Radiant Lotus's ability is not a mana ability, which means you avoid the issues Krark-Clan Ironworks has. You cannot activate this in the middle of casting a spell like you normally can!

04.02.2025 06:52 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Blood for Bones doesn't target! That means it has extra modality most reanimation spells don't. You can return the creature you sacrificed to hand, or even back to the battlefield for a pseudo-blink in black! Being able to decide what you recur on resolution has lead to several fun edge cases for me

03.02.2025 00:38 — 👍 1    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Starting off with the card I credit for my deep appreciation for Magic card designs, Mind Rake. The use of Overload here is extremely clever. Rather than a more expensive alternate cost for a much more powerful effect, you can instead opt to overload for a weaker, yet cheaper, version of the spell.

02.02.2025 08:13 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0