MTG Salvation

Your card referencing the tribe for it's tokens does not pass the subchallenge. I'll add that to the clarifications.

I figured. Thanks for the quick response.

Edit: Bang up job on the MCC thus far, by the way. Fun stuff!

Edit2: The Virus idea I came up with for the first round has inspired me to start thinking about an all new set. Thanks for that.

Edit3: BTW, is it safe for me to start posting my ideas about my Virus set in other places in CCC? I've been holding off posting anything as to not violate the rules of the first round, but I'm not sure they apply anymore.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! Being evil is fun after all.

It's not really the evil part I'm enjoying as much as the creativity. Having to try to convey an entire new race to someone with just one card is quite the challenge. Honestly, I feel like I cheated a little bit by using Virus, since everyone already knows what that is. It passes technically though, Virus certainly isn't a class. Gotta love loop holes.

I did intend the first challenge to be difficult. Magic is a game of mechanics and flavor that defined the CCG genre. It created many unique fantasy monsters that have their own identity. Being able to convey that in a single card is something that is routine in magic design, but takes a lot of skill to have all the parts line up. It should be emphasized. I gave the direction of evil and villainous creatures because those are both some of the most iconic and some of the most important to create an interesting narrative. If your villains are sub pair, no one will care about your heroes. After all, would Batman or Spiderman be interesting if all they stopped was petty theft?

Some players tried to do a unique creation and others, like yourself, took an existing idea that they felt could fit the challenge. The results were mixed. It is harder to create something entirely new, but taking something with preconceived ideas already attached to it poses it's own challenges, especially when interpreted by another.

Quote from PsyOp »

Wow, I read that qualification and still went ahead with it. I need to read more carefully and actually think about things even when I think I have a cool card. I think I disconnected between the examples of pumping or granting abilities and generating tokens. As dumb as that is and all.

Don't feel too bad PsyOp, the card I was asking IcariiFA about was actually almost exactly the same card as the first one you posted. The only differences were mine was a mono-blue sorcery that only counted cards put into an opponent's graveyard from his or her library (I was even considering changing mine to U/B). I'd say great minds, but we both missed the whole challenge part.

Quote from admirableadmiral »

Judgments are up.

Looks like Tilwin is the winner. Do you agree?

Clarification: Tokens having a creature/class doesn't violate the second sub challenge right?

Quote from Altaurus321 »

Clarification: Tokens having a creature/class doesn't violate the second sub challenge right?

That was asked and answered in thread. It does violate the second sub challenge.

Ah.. so it is. Sorry!

@Bravelion...Thank you for your judgment. It is thorough and insightful as usual. That said, are you sure the wording for the reminder text is wrong? I took it straight from Sedris, the Traitor King. Does the fact that Corpse Rotation is in the graveyard change the wording?

While I understand that formatting is an important aspect of card making, and is part of the MCC judging rubric, I feel that deducting a 1/2 point for using dashes instead of bullet points for a modal card is a bit harsh. As far as I know, there are only two ways to go about making bullet points on this forum. The first is to use the {list}{*}{/list} method. I believe this results in an additional space after the list that will potentially cause you to lose points for incorrect formatting. The second is to use the alt 7 (I think that's right) method. As far as I know, this is only possible if you have a number pad on your keyboard, which my laptop does not. I post all of my cards from my laptop and, because of this, I tend to avoid modal spells when posting cards in the MCC (the DCC tends to be a bit more lax on such things). Anyway my point is, at some point you're not really judging people based on their card making skills as much as you are their computer knowledge and access to a keyboard with a number pad. I'd hate to see perfectly good designers turn away from the community out of frustration over such things.

One last thing, please notice that I use phrases such as "as far as know" and "I believe" as much as possible in my posts. I have never claimed to be an aficionado on anything pertaining to computers or card making, I am just voicing my thoughts on the matter, feel free to respectfully correct any inaccuracies.

Quote from Tilwin »

Don't feel bad about formating. It's part of the quality of the card. Standards are important as they give uniformity to the layout of the card and make them more universally understandable. It's just like saying grammar is not important, but when you see mispellings you cannot ignore them and feel they are affecting the general quality of a card. The details make the difference between a professional-looking product and an amateurish tentative.
Of course in the end some judges are more rigorous about these aspects while others tend to be more "gentle" with them. I love harsh judgings from this point of view since they help me understand the standards better and come up with more realistic wordings closer to what WotC is printing. But then again, I am a bit of a grammar and formatting nazi even in real-work situations on the project I am working on.

I share this 100%. Thanks Tilwin, it's like you wrote this taking it right from my brain. That's exactly how I see this. I didn't write two whole articles on grammar, formatting and quality for nothing (you can see them in my signature, they're the two "Mark of quality" ones, and a third one will surely come sooner or later). As a judge, I expect contestants to know how to correctly format and type cards, just as much as I expect them to cost cards reasonably and to avoid blatantly broken cards.

By the way, there are many ways to make a bullet point. I can think of four right away: two are those Flatline already mentioned (use [list] tags, which should be avoided because it leaves an extra line break at the end of the list, and typing ALT + 7 on the numeric keypad). Another is typing ALT + 0149 sequentially on the numeric keypad while keeping ALT pressed. Finally, if you are in Windows and don't have a numeric keypad, you can always just copy it from the character map.

While the discussion about bullet points is happening, I want to point out that on at least one occasion the forum has prevented me from posting for having "invalid characters in the post" something about latin characters, which was resolved by removing my alt-code bullet points. When the forum doesn't even consistently allow for bullet pointing the way people want, I think its time for a bit of leniency, at least with accepting the extra space of the [list] tag. After all, that is the forum's officially supported bullet pointing method. Seems really unfair to penalize people for using that (not that the specific example is such a case).
List tags are malformed.

ALT+7 also produces a bullet (•), and is a bit easier to remember than ALT+0149 (•). If they're any different, I can't see it.

Final critiques are up here. I wish I had more time for them, but I have been busy.

Now that Fearless Feline has finalized his judgments, I'd like to share a few thoughts. First, I'd like to give props to Groovelord for a job well done. I feel like he did the best job in the first round of getting across the flavor of his race (no offense to any others). I'm not sure I see the Gnorts as a menace like the Eldrazi or Phyrexia, but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what a Gnort is. Good job with only one card!

Judgments are up. Apologies for the wait, I had two finals today and I had to study for them last night.

Thanks for the feedback on my judgments. I'll try to address your comments here:

Quote from Tilwin »

Thanks for the judgment and especially for the caught up inappropriate wording. I should have indeed specified that "puts all cards revealed this way into his or her graveyard".
I have two comments regarding the feedback.

Elegance: This is really inelegant in the sense that you almost always are targeting yourself with the ability.
What about Misdirection? You mentioned decks that can make this card very powerful, I am thinking here at Legacy Storm. And if that is the case, Misdirection is a big deal in legacy. Thoughtseize would almost all the time want to target an opponent at the same time - it makes very little sense to want to discard your own card using it (there are better discard mechanics if you want to take advantage of discard/graveyard interaction). So again you could justify that Thoughtseize should have targeted opponents only, like Duress does.
Fringe useful you could include the mill effect in the right deck, but then again, that's very fringe and probably not that relevant. I did leave it in to targeting any player for that reason too though... makes for an interesting limited play in the appropriate environment.
Finally, you can use this in a 2HG game to fuel another player's graveyard and mana pool for an even more powerful effect... which I found potentially fun.
It's hard to say whether the cards designed here are meant for a particular format only, so I am usually targeting as many formats as possible without trying to make it too busted. By format I mean here constructed, limited and multiplayer games (2HG, FFA, Commander).

I don't disagree that there is a difference between being able to target any player and only being able to target yourself; my case is that I believe that the extra utility makes the design less elegant and less intuitive for newer players. In their minds, thoughtseize should only be able to target opponents, right? (Side note: I have won a game by targeting myself with a Thoughtseize to get my Golgari Grave-Troll into my graveyard with no other means to do so!) Unfortunately, by giving the card marginal utility, you end up taking away from its elegance somewhat. I only took away one or two points for it, as I felt it was more of a minor concern, but it is a concern nonetheless. If you changed the card such that you always got the mana regardless of who you targeted, it would have gotten full points for elegance from me.

I'm not really feeling the flavor text. It feels very generic. The name is even worse; it doesn't make any sense with the mechanics of the card and it doesn't say anything either.
Yeah, I guess this is highly subjective so I can only justify my design decision here - when it comes to flavor there is a great degree of subjectivity so I can understand why polarizing opinions can occur. The idea of vortex arose from the cards being dragged into the graveyard (as opposed to library-graveyard manipulation sometimes seen as mind invasion... not always the case - though again there is nothing wrong with a demon tapping into one's mind in exchange for some benefit). I also saw this as a form of demonic intervention, something Liliana Vess is well known for - she made 4 pacts with 4 different demons to achieve apparent immortality or at least lengthen her life. This card represents a form of sacrifice (milling) in order to achieve some sort of advantage/power (black mana in this case). Ultimately I figured Liliana fits as a figure for this card as she generally generates black mana.

When it comes to Magic cards, unless you're dealing with a vanilla creature that has the whole text box for flavor text, you generally get a few dozen words to convey the flavor of a card. Your card did not say anything that made the card feel unique or otherwise gave it a special flavor. That you could put your flavor text on several other cards and have it still work, like Dark Ritual or Mind Rot makes it feel less unique. That was more of a minor complaint compared to the name. To say the card is related to a vortex is a stretch, and to say that it has anything to do with demons is ludicrous. That you had to explain the flavor to me for me to get it is a bad sign; truly good flavor text conveys what the card is doing and why it is doing it. If I were designing a name for this card, I might have gone with something along the lines of Underworld Collusion, or some other name that gives it a feel other than "This is a demon card because demons do evil things like evil rituals that give you mana".

Thanks again for your criticism and opinions but especially when we talk about flavors I am not so sure how even or uneven the scores are.

Thanks for the feedback. I realize that judging is highly subjective in certain areas, but I never try to unfairly deny one player points unless I see an issue with their card.

At the end of the day, I did really like your card; I especially liked the implications it might have on a standard format. I just felt a few details kept it from achieving a top tier score.

No explanations of your cards ideas are allowed. It must be illustrated by what would be printed on the card only.

As a point of clarity, does this round follows the same restrictions as round 1 regarding card renders?

Quote from Piar »

No explanations of your cards ideas are allowed. It must be illustrated by what would be printed on the card only.

As a point of clarity, does this round follows the same restrictions as round 1 regarding card renders?

It does not. I disallowed renders in the first round because I felt that both eased the burden of creating your own type of creature and in fact would make people create creature types based on the pictures they found (not their own ideas distinct for the magic universe.) For this round I don't feel that it makes a significant difference, so renders are allowed.

Quote from thenoodler »

I have a more general question: Is it okay to submit cards specifically designed for Commander/EDH?

I don't see why not, so long as it fulfills the challenge rules.

Quote from thenoodler »

Cool, thanks for the clarification!
And while I'm already asking: is it okay to post renders again?

Quote from IcariiFA »

Quote from Piar »

No explanations of your cards ideas are allowed. It must be illustrated by what would be printed on the card only.

As a point of clarity, does this round follows the same restrictions as round 1 regarding card renders?

It does not. I disallowed renders in the first round because I felt that both eased the burden of creating your own type of creature and in fact would make people create creature types based on the pictures they found (not their own ideas distinct for the magic universe.) For this round I don't feel that it makes a significant difference, so renders are allowed.

I know that you don't want any additional descriptions/explanations on our entries this round, so I was wondering, that since the first side of my card is colorless and the other is colored, how can I specify the color without violating the rule? Or does it even matter?

Quote from L0ng5h0t »

I know that you don't want any additional descriptions/explanations on our entries this round, so I was wondering, that since the first side of my card is colorless and the other is colored, how can I specify the color without violating the rule? Or does it even matter?

You can still label color identity with your card, that doesn't violate the rules. A lot of times I see folks just put the color in () were the cost would be. I'm not 100% what the "official" format for placing it on the entry is. I'll need to look it up, or prod bravelion83. *prod*