Third Place
Yavimaya Metaltamer (Designed by MagmaDragon3)

The Maestro: This fancy cool phyrexian creator is fabulously clean. With a lovely linear mechanical link and a powerful pushy playstyle, this elf artificer is extra appealing for an exciting aggressive strategy. Finished off with fitting art, this powerstone producer puts itself in third place.

I awoke with a drive to work.

CM Staff: It looks like a card leaked out of the recent Dominaria sets! Seriously though, this is a pretty sweet combination of canon mechanics. The Powerstone token can be used in its "intended" way (on artifacts), but it also helps you pay the card's own activated ability, which helps make this card a pretty big threat! Thoughtfully, its body is not the strongest, adding a good amount of risk into cashing out its strong ability. A solid entry to start us off!

Second Place
Elvish Apothecary (Designed by CyberFive)

The Maestro: Ooh, Brew! This potent potion mechanic has some powerful potential, executed perfectly here. Again incentivizing aggression, this angry apothecary’s play patterns seem pleasantly unique and interesting. This slick cleric stews its way into second place.

I desire development. I require research.

CM Staff: The potion token is pretty clearly the star of the show here; although it is simple, there is a ton of potential design space. The example here shows the simplest case of banking a single +1/+1 counter, but the potential for higher values is there, as well as even keyword counters (Brew Flying, anyone?). The creature itself also showcases even more uses for the tokens, letting you put even more counters on it after the fact. There was some concern in being able to put both deathtouch and trample on the same token leading to some weird rules interactions, but it wasn't enough to hold back the entry. Very nice!

First Place
Alkir, Trailblazing Naturalist (Designed by Julien)

The Maestro: What fresh flavor in a fun frame! The supposedly symmetrical Leyline Compass cleverly points towards Alkir’s ability, creating a lovely loop of large-scale value. Overall, Alkir exemplifies excellent legend engineering, with easy to irk ludonarrative and an effect you wouldn’t want in many multiples. Alkir trailblazes his way into 1st place.

Who am I?

CM Staff: The package here is certainly impressive, not just the clean and cool visuals, but also the uniqueness of the abilities. The group-hug-ish nature of the first ability is something we feel like would be welcome in a format like EDH, and the power of the ability is one that would be exciting for a Commander to have, letting you cash in further on additional casts. The second ability really ties everything together, presenting not only a strategy for yourself to build into, but turning the ramp for your opponents into a bit of a poisoned gift! An overall awesome design worthy of taking first place!