To coincide with this month's Block Party contest, Jake sheds some light on the themes and mechanics at work in Magic's popular Shards of Alara block.

Invade Alara after the jump!

This week, Jake takes a crack at fixing some of the rules and presentation issues plaguing the Star Wars Card Game (as discussed last week).

More Star Wars Nerdery after the jump!

We take a break this week from Magic, Magic, Magic all the time to talk about a lesser-quality game that's been out of print for ten years.

What could we be thinking? Find out after the jump!

What goes into a common card? This week, we walk through some of the factors that go into designing a common and a few of the constraints the affect common card design.

Take a look after the jump!

This week, Jake Kessler explains the different dimensions that go into designing a planeswalker card, complete with two custom examples.

It's Block Party time again here on Eye of the Vortex! The Block Party is one of the card design contests we do every month, and the objective is to design a Magic card that could have been printed in the given block. The contest topic this time around is Masques-block.

In his next installment of Designer Magic, Jake looks at his upcoming Block Party Contest and gives many helpful suggestions on how to get involved and improve your designing skills.

Interested in seeing what he has to say? Then jump right in...

Meet Jake Kessler.

Jake is our new resident Contest Admin who is also writing a weekly blog here in our TGE forum. Take a few minutes to see what Jake has to say about Magic, but more importantly, the design of the game.

More after the Jump!