Third Place
Crown of Compleation (Designed by Piguy)

The Maestro: A steep price for a cheap card-advantage device! Greedy gamers may covet this crown, but hot-potatoesque hijinks shall happen with haste when the counter count amounts to six or more- before then, cards galore! Sure to spice up any multiplayer table, this horrible hat heads its way into third place. 

CM Staff: This card is quite the curious design! The power it offers is quite alluring, but it also comes with the inevitability of death through the poison counters. You do have an out, though! By sacrificing a creature, you can gift this card to another player of your choice, forcing them to deal with it. They can give it back, of course, but that's all part of the game that this card brings to the table. Poison counters as a cost are an interesting design space that numerous submissions toyed around with, and it is explored well here!

Second Place
Humor Jar (Designed by GoogleSheets)

The Maestro: Leeches detected where least expected! This rem̴͓̍a̵̯̖̕ṟ̸͌̽͝k̵̗͕̣̓̊̒able typal strat debuts from the bayou, making two (that’s quite a few) and giving them to you alongside an artifact that gives each leech additional reach. Though lacking flavor as of now, one can only imagine what secrets these silly slimy friends might feature if finalized. For now, the leeches reach an impressive second place. 

CM Staff: Humor jar is a very simple card, but often times there is an elegance that can be attributed to that simplicity. The baseline of your typical two-mana spell that makes two tokens is all well and good, but having that be an adventure where you can cast a field buffing spell afterwards? That's pretty sweet! Now if you don't mind, we're off to sleeve this up with some Squelching Leeches!

First Place
Whispering Shard (Designed by storyfeline)

The Maestro: This shard goes hard! A three-act artifact that packs a punch, I have a hunch the uses for this stone are clearer than the murky w̵̹̖̗͌̽͠a̴̯͂͝t̸̺̲̋̌ę̵̮̹̀r̴͍̳͉̎̓͌ found within its art; for starters, it draws at a rate which, while debatably too great, certainly won’t leave you waiting for advantage to arrive. It’s reanimation abilities are swell as well, and I can tell much thought has gone into making it a flavor win too. The Whispering Shard wins its way into first place!

CM Staff: Our second featured card that utilizes poison counters as a cost and it sure comes out swinging. Almost too fittingly similar to staff artifacts like Staff of Compleation, this shard gives you access to some very powerful activated abilities, though you'll soon be left with a brick after a few uses (but hey, at least you can keep cycling your fetch lands, right?). This front loaded power offers tension both in game and in deck building, as multiple copies aren't exactly too helpful. It's this combination of complexity and fun that takes this design to the top!