MTG Salvation

Due to IRL problems the judgings will start tomorrow. Also, two players still didn't post anything.

Brackets are up.

Oh man, I lost because I forgot the hyphen in Niv-Mizzet's name. That's rough. I wish I could say it was just a typo, but in reality, it's because I expend a small fraction of brain-power to card making these days in comparison to a couple of years ago. I feel like the two cards that beat me were better anyway, so I suppose justice prevailed in the end one way or another.

On a side note, I don't disagree that the name of my card wasn't very exciting, but it was meant to be a call back to the old seal cards, which I found rather pleasing. But that might just be me.

I'll have my judgments in tomorrow afternoon.

Any helpful tips how to run Round 3 with three judges and seven players?

Three people get put in a bracket together.
A- 2 players
B- 2 players
C- 3 players

Judge Alpha does A, B
Beta does B, C
Delta does A, C

Winner of each bracket advances

Is it forbidden to post art descriptions? I'm not actually sure why that isn't done more often in this forum - we do all the other card concepting work.
Obviously just asking because I have an idea for my current card.

Quote from Gerrard"s Mom »

Is it forbidden to post art descriptions? I'm not actually sure why that isn't done more often in this forum - we do all the other card concepting work.
Obviously just asking because I have an idea for my current card.

Once upon a time I'd say no. But I think I'd say yes you can do so, as long as you put it in a spoiler to be nonintrusive.

Reminder just in case:

Important! For the rest of the contest, all of your designs have to be associated with the guild you claimed for Round 1

I guess if Rudyard and Marco don't show you have a 5-person problem instead...
I suppose the easiest thing to do there would be one bracket of two and one of three, and two of the judges only judge one bracket.
i.e.
Judge A - players 1, 2
Judge B - player 3, 4, 5
Judge C - all players

We still have 34 more hours...

Oh yeah thought it was the 25th today

Quote from Gerrard"s Mom »

Is it forbidden to post art descriptions? I'm not actually sure why that isn't done more often in this forum - we do all the other card concepting work.
Obviously just asking because I have an idea for my current card.

In the MCC, art descriptions have always been forbidden (unless required by the challenge, in a few rare occasions it has happened if I recall correctly, but it hasn't for a long time now). As one of the people involved in the change of the rubric a few years ago, I can confirm that it was never our intention to allow art descriptions, which were already officially forbidden in the MCC. My advice is to avoid it, but if you absolutely have to include one, the very least is that you put it in a spoiler as void_nothing said, and the month's judges should not look at it before judging. Otherwise, you can post it here in the discussion thread after judging is done. Obviously, this month I'm just a simple player, so if the host chooses differently I'm not stopping them, but in the MCC, which is our most strict and formal contest, rules and precedents should matter. In other contests, like the CCL or DCC, you can usually feel free to post art descriptions (but always ask to the host if in doubt).

I hope this post doesn't sound like I want to impose my own point of view, I'm just trying to tell how things have been until now, and things can change. But any change to the MCC should be discussed here before implementing it, as we did with the rubric change at that time. I'm not opposed a priori to the inclusion of optional art descriptions, but I don't think that's a change that can be applied this month with the contest more than halfway done. It's definitely something we can talk about for future months though.

One thing I've been saying for a long time that we should discuss is an official stance about what to do in round 3 if we have an odd number of players for any reason (a tie in round 2 or a no-show in sound 3 being the most common ones). I have no idea what the most fair method would be, but I do know from my experience as host that that is the thing you want to avoid the most if you're organizing the contest in a given month, exactly because you don't know how you're supposed to proceed. Until now, when that happens the host can solve that any way they want. The versus nature of the round is what requires the number of players to be even. One thing I've thinking about lately is that maybe we can change that, and have brackets (maybe partially or completely overlapping ones) instead of versus matches in round 3 too.

Does anybody have comments/ideas/opinions about both of these matters (allowing optional art descriptions and the "round 3 problem")?

EDIT:

Quote from Gerrard"s Mom »

I guess if Rudyard and Marco don't show you have a 5-person problem instead...
I suppose the easiest thing to do there would be one bracket of two and one of three, and two of the judges only judge one bracket.
i.e.
Judge A - players 1, 2
Judge B - player 3, 4, 5
Judge C - all players

My opinion: that looks like a quite unbalanced workload between judges. Another solution is, again, giving up the versus nature of the round, let all judges judge all five entries and have the top N total scores advancing, where the value of N can be discussed. I personally think the N = 3 is the fairest option. 2 is not enough players in the final round, 4 means only one elimination in round 3 which sounds too few. Five players are definitely not too many to judge for a single judge, you usually have more in round 1. Again, what does anybody else think about this?

We already have 6 players so I think we are fine.

I considered proposing all judges cover all players in the case of 5 entries as well. I agree that the advantage is making it easier to advance 3, the disadvantage being it is more work for judges. Judges have it hard enough as is, which is why I proposed what I did, but I have no other objection to that policy.
I don't really see any option for 7 players than the current one. It would not work to have Player 1 judged vs Player 2 by one Judge and vs Player 3 by another judge - regardless of our attempts at impartiality, some judges give higher average scores than others, so the competition must be held constant for everyone. The bracket of 3 is slightly more difficult, sure, but I think it's preferable to the alternative (top scores amongst overlapping brackets).

I did recall that there was some prohibition against posting anything but cards in your MCC posts before, but I couldn't find that listed in the current FAQ in the OP of this thread.
My argument would be that just as including a render is optional (but can be judged under Flavor in my understanding), an art description should be treated exactly the same. Almost none of us can create competent art ourselves, and it takes time and is iffy in copyright terms to use others' art without permission. My argument in favor of art descriptions is that it could virtually expand that last part of the card to people who don't otherwise use it. Again, like renders, it should be totally optional, but should count for Flavor if included.
I don't see how an art description is any different than the card name, flavor text, and stuff like creature types - all of those aspects are determined by the creative team at WotC.

Maybe we should consider having an option to include either render or a defined maximum number (500 or so) of characters in text (that aren't part of the card submitted) alongside each entry. This would allow further definition of entries while still having a codified standard.

With the round officially over with only six contestants entered, there's no need to figure out any unorthodox method for judging.

For what it's worth: My favored method for judging an uneven number of contestants in the third round, no matter what that number is, is to have one of the brackets contain three players. This is much fairer than giving anyone a bye and preserves the general structure of the versus round. I am, as it were, the only mod of this subforum, but I cannot be the sole source of policy. Having the input of as many people who play in this contest as possible is vital.

However, when rules are ambiguous, it is 100% up to the organizer to make that decision in the moment. I am of the belief that organizers have dictatorial powers over their own contests in most circumstances; if a higher authority (meaning me or God forbid senior staff) has to step in then there's either a severe technical problem or something worthy of infractions has occurred.

Round is closed and brackets are up.

I basically agree with everything Gerrard's Mom and void_nothing have said. I also think Cardz5000's proposal is definitely something we can talk about. For what it's worth, renders are already optional. I (and I think most other people) don't usually do them because finding the right art for your card while not incurring in potential copyright issues is, in my opinion, just too hard and not worth it for something optional. I would welcome more discussion and more opinions from other people too about the issues I raised in my post yesterday.

About this month's contest, while working on my cards for the CCL top 4, I just realized a major flaw in my submission for round 3 of the MCC. I would totally make a change to fix it right now, but unfortunately I am a few hours too late. I hope it doesn't cost me the round, but I will totally understand if it does. As for what it is, I will tell after judging is closed.

Huh. I never even knew that art description was forbidden in the MCC. It seems kind of strange that art description is forbidden, but renders are allowed. I suppose it does allow for an opportunity to give a whole background story to a card. Although it would be obvious that someone was doing this. If asked my opinion, I would say that I would prefer no art description, but that answer mostly stems from laziness. Even though it would be "optional", if it impacted judgment, and everyone else was doing it, it would be very hard give up on the extra point(s). That said, I don't really have any major problem with people posting art descriptions, assuming they're not trying to give an entire back story to their card.

Quote from bravelion83 »

About this month's contest, while working on my cards for the CCL top 4, I just realized a major flaw in my submission for round 3 of the MCC. I would totally make a change to fix it right now, but unfortunately I am a few hours too late. I hope it doesn't cost me the round, but I will totally understand if it does. As for what it is, I will tell after judging is closed.

Quote from Antiantiserum »

The warrior gives itself power and trample but also taps while doing so. First I thought, well, blocking with bigger power at least makes some sense. But being only able to activate this during your turn . . . well, give it vigilance then?

Yes, that was it. It's not supposed to have a tap symbol in the activation cost, as is it gives itself abilities that are useful for attacking but then it can't attack because it's tapped. "Activate only during your turn" was because I didn't want the ability to be used defensively. The change I would have made is to remove the tap symbol and maybe raise the activation cost to make up for it. Giving it vigilance is a solution I didn't think of, but it would require the card to be multicolored. It wouldn't be a problem in a vacuum, it could just be Boros-colored, but flavorfully the card was meant to represent the overlap between the Boros and the Izzet on Ravnica, which means it wants to be monored so you can run it in both decks, while also making sense as a potential Jeskai reprint in an hypothetical return to Tarkir (I tried to use name and creature types that could make sense on both Ravnica and Tarkir). Thanks to Antiantiserum for their nice words about the card's flavor, and yes, I'm going to call it "Guilds of Ravnica block" too. They're also correct that it should say "each get" without the "s". That's what happens when you post a card and then don't have time to review it until it's too late.

I felt like I could say this even if one judgement is still missing because the 4 point gap between me and netn10 is too much to recover in my opinion, and also because once my mistake was spotted by one judge, the last judge could also just read about it in the one judgment that has already been posted. No problem, I made a mistake and I deserve to be out this month. Best of luck to netn10 in the finals. I'll be back next (this?) month.

EDIT: the missing judgment was posted as I was writing this, and it correctly points out my mistake too, so no problem.

2Antiantiserum: You miscalculated the score for Jimmy Groove (it's actually 21).

Round 4 is up.

October's round 1 will go up in the morning. (And yes I am running all the monthly contests this month but I have successfully done so before and I welcome the challenge.)

Let judging begin.

Void_nothing?