Here is what we sent to the contestants:

GDS3 Design Test

For Trial 3, the design test, you will need to design ten cards that meet the following criteria:

1. All the cards will be two-color and each of the ten two-color combinations (listed below) need to be represented.

2. Each of the following five card types (creature, enchantment, instant, planeswalker and sorcery) needs to be represented twice, and never on the same color.

3. Each rarity (common, uncommon, rare, and mythic rare) must be represented on at least two cards.

4. Submit your cards in order of quality of design from what you consider your best design (first) to what you consider your worst design (last).

Cards must be submitted in the following format:

Name (rarity) - Note: Normally the name is bolded, but your submission is plain text so that can be ignored in this case

Mana Cost Card Type - Subtype

Power/Toughness - IF CREATURE, SKIP LINE IF NOT

Rules Text

Two examples solely for the purpose of card formatting (one creature, one spell):

Lab Experiment (common)

1GU

Creature - Bird Elephant Mutant

3/3

Flying, trample

That Should Hurt (uncommon)

3BR

Sorcery

CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature. That creature’s controller discards two cards.

Here are the abbreviations for how mana is written:

W = white

U = blue

B = black

R = red

G = green

Number = number of generic mana (i.e. 2 for two generic mana)

Here is the mana order for two-color spells (you must have one design of each):

WU - white/blue

UB - blue/black

BR - black/red

RG - red/green

GW - green/white

WB - white/black

UR - blue/red

BG - black/green

RW - red/white

GU - green/blue

You have until 11:59 pm PST on Sunday, February 4, 2018 to submit this form. Good luck!

I then sent out some follow-up instructions to the 94 contestants taking the trial:

• The designs were for an undefined Standard-legal set. They were told not to design for other formats (Commander, Conspiracy, Un-Sets, etc.)

• They were told not to make new named keyword/ability word mechanics. (They could write things out as long as they didn’t name them.) The only mechanics they should use were evergreen (flying, first strike, haste, etc.) or deciduous mechanics (hybrid, double-faced cards, split cards, etc.). They were not allowed to use old block keyword/ability word mechanics.

• The cards were being graded in a vacuum meaning the designs didn’t have to have a relevance to one another.

• They didn’t get any text to explain their designs. The cards had to speak for themselves.

• They could add creative elements, and everything needed to be named and costed, but they weren’t going to be graded on their creative work or costing.



I am now grading the design tests along with the other two trials to determine the Top 8. Because we want to keep the Top 8 design tests secret until the first GDS3 show on Friday, March 9, we are asking all of the 94 contestants to keep quiet about their submissions until we know who the Top 8 are. The non-Top 8 will be allowed to publicly show their tests once they have been informed they are not in the Top 8.

EDIT: One last thing I forgot. The third trial was designed by Erik Lauer.