I wanted to post a picture here of the event as usual, but this time I didn’t have my own camera and I can’t find any online either. So here’s just an impression from last year:

This has been a contest organized by Magic’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, with a design internship as the fabled prize. Unfortunately for me and many others, only US residents were eligible to enter the contest. There were some twists to this second installment of the Great Designer Search however and one of them was that contestants had to work together with the community and make use of their designs and cards. So as an outsider, I could still be closely involved with the contestants by helping them with the design challenges.

And that’s exactly what I did!

When the dust settled, 2 of the contestants I have supported throughout the contest came out on top! Ethan Fleischer was the grand winner and won the design intership, and finalist Shawn Main was offered an intership at another branch of the company (Magic digital group). By just being “in there” he will get opportunities to contribute to Magic design, so he’s a big winner too in my book!

(Ethan's top right, Shawn's bottom right, bottom left is Mark Rosewater, Magic's Head Designer)

The design tests started in october, and from that time all the way to the final challege in februari I’ve worked closely with Ethan, Shawn and Jonathon Loucks, a third designer I supported who stranded at fifth place. Communication took place on wiki’s, forums and twitter.

In the end, I managed to get a whopping 21 card designs in the submissions of the top 8 contestants (which is a lot in the context of the contest) making me one of the top 3 most prolific community designers. I even got a few shout-outs from the judges for my “narrative designs”:

“Phenomenal flavor. Holy cow. Another hit by Toby or Not Toby, and credit to you for including it. We’ve seen a dozen variations on this staple blue removal spell, and the ingenuity applied here makes it feel brand new.”

- Mark Gottlieb, to Ethan Fleischer, on Fossilize

Congratulations and best of luck to Ethan and Shawn! If ever there’s another Great Designer Search in the future, and I’m eligible to enter, I’ll be ready.

http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/11462/glimmer/index.html

And this blog post by Ludomo shows how it pops up on all kinds of portals of Big Fish.

Exiting times =) I wonder how it will do and what people will think of it!