The Rules:


Design a card (or possibly multiple cards) that meets the design constraint described below. The one that I like the best is the winner. You may submit multiple entries, but please be considerate of your fellow players and don't go too overboard. In the case of multiple entries, you will still receive one prize at most.


In addition to any listed prizes, the winner then creates a thread for the next round, creates a new design constraint, and the game continues.



Design Constraint:
Design a card or equipment that cares in some way Presents.





Examples
There are currently two cards that create and care about presents: Pappy Jasper and Night of Bells. Link to them on hextcgbrowswer.com


Judging Criteria:
Here's what I focus on in judging, in order of priority

• Mechanically Creative, yet realistic: Show me something new that hasn't been done before, but make sure it still fits within the realm of HEX gameplay. Feel free to invent keywords and even use non-Entrathian flavor, but keep your designs mechanically grounded to work within the game rules.
  
• Game Diversity: Does your creation encourage interesting game play decisions? Could you build a lot of different decks around your creation?
  
• Elegance: Keep your designs to as little rules text as possible. I tend to start mentally nitpicking overly verbose cards and wondering why sometimes disparate abilities are grafted together on a card.
  

Rewards:

• 1st place: Mercenary Brosi-Buk + 4 x Pippet's Gift with equipment + Judge for next round
  
• 2nd place: 4 x Pappy Jasper with both equipment + 4 x Uncle Sparklestaff with both equipment + 1 Frostheart Pack
  

Deadline:
The contest will end on Wednesday, January 3rd at 12pm PST. I will then judge the cards that afternoon/evening.

The winners are in. I graded each card on three metrics: Creativity, Diversity, Elegance. And because of the season, I'm awarding a small token for high achievers in each category.

Creativity was most important. Being a Card Design Contest, it's important to actually create something new. In this particular category, @invinible made a thoroughly unique card called Black Market. It does two things never done before in HEX. First, it easily gains troop types based on the troops around it. In addition, it gives out-of-battle rewards to cards played in any encounter. So as a bonus award for extra creativity, I'm awarding you a card would work exceptionally well if Black Market existed: 2 x Replica Reinforcements

The next metric I looked at was game diversity. Grading game diversity, I was looking at whether your card would be able to have multiple uses. A card with a high rating here would encourage a variety of game states or could be used in lot of different ways in different decks. Lucia's Wreath by @Shylba is a good example of a card with high diversity. It has three distinct abilities. Each ability by itself could actually be the foundation of a completely different deck. Maybe put this into a construction plans deck. Or maybe put this in a charge generation deck to have a cheap charge power to use. All together, I can imagine Lucia's Wreath being a supporting card in a variety of different decks. As a bonus award for making a card that possesses several diverse uses, I am gifting a pair of Gront's Gift, a gift that would be another viable way to take advantage of Lucia's Wreath.

Elegance is in one way the opposite of game diversity, as here you're looking for a certain simplicity. All too often, these card design contests include submissions that have a whole list of abilities that often don't make sense on a single card. What's of course tricky is making sure the card is both elegant, but still interesting. Lightning Brave would be an elegant card due to its simplicity, but terribly boring. The winners of the contest both got top marks in elegance by making cards with clear, concise rules text but still would encourage interesting game play.

So without further ado, here are the winners of this weeks design contest.

The runner-up is @Olfff with the submission of the Tree of Bells. Tree of Bells creates an interesting dynamic: transform your presents as soon as you get them to reap incidental bonuses or hoard your presents for a game crushing avalanche. Or of course, maybe you focus a deck around one of the abilities of the Tree of Bells. All told, this card gives a couple different strategies you could use to play with presents. My minor complaint is mainly that it might be a little overcosted, especially considering that this would want to be the same deck as another 6 cost card with no immediate impact on the board: Night of Bells. So for second place, you have earned playsets of the old holiday cards + booster pack.

The winner of this weeks contest with the submission that I liked best is @Zyblen with the submission of Gift-o-Tron. Maybe I'm just partial to cards that have a little story behind it, but the goal of making sure your presents are not small cost junk is a perfect ability for a 1 cost artifact. It has a simple ability that helps ensure you have interesting cards popping out of your presents. So for first place, you get the Brosi merc and his gift. In addition, you now have the solemn duty to make the next contest.


So congrats to all submissions, and see you next week.