MTG Salvation

I just have to thank you. You've made me notice an unintended loophole in the challenge instead of just exploiting it to your benefit, and you did so in a very nice and civil way. This is the way anybody should behave in situations like this.

Quote from slimytrout »

For the record, my current submission should still work independent of the revision ("until the end of your next turn").

Yes, I confirm that your current submission passes the revised Main Challenge just fine.

I don't want to dispute and overturn the results, but wanted to add my commentary on my entry and my bracket.

Firstly, Bravelion83, I don't understand why you cut half a point for the second subchallenge. Of course, I was having fun with adding words with "end" string, but not having the be related to the word "end". I didn't verify it in the first round, so I let it slide, but now I'm quite sure my words are not related to "end", so they should just pass the challenge.

Secondly, I just wanted to tell that the cost and "speed" of a spell are important distinctions in the design, and are important tools both in card and in set design. I don't think anyone would tell that Agonizing Syphon is the same card as Lightning Helix. Even if they have the same text, Wing Snare and Plummet are definitely different cards than mine, being played and appearing in different situations. I'm not saying 3 points different, but not 0 either, especially in common design space.

Finally, it's possible that I'm biased now, but if I were judging, I would take at least some points from Jimmy Grove for color pie and rate issues. Sure, blue is supposed to be able to transform, but let's be honest - 0/1 without abilities instead of any creature, no questions asked, on flash, is just a Murder in Simic, and in his card a possibly recurring Murder. Note that blue now is supposed to have its transformation be random (Polymorph), reversible (EOT, aura) or replacing with a creature with a true creature, 2/2 at least (Reality Shift, Curse of the Swine, Pongify). Green is rather transforming its creatures into 3/3+ (Scale Up). Together, they can have cards that transform any creature into a 3/3 or similar (Incongruity).

As for your first point:

Quote from bravelion83 »

I'm not a fan of trying to stretch the boundaries of a challenge like this or like you did in round 1.

This is essentially the reason. What felt like having fun to you wasn't exactly fun to me as the creator of the challenges. To me, it felt like somebody was implicitly telling me "you didn't want me to do this, but look, I can do it and I'm doing it just to kid you" (I'm trying to find a way to phrase this in a way that doesn't sound aggressive or confrontational, I hope I've managed it but if I haven't please don't read this that way, it's just so hard to convey tone in writing). At first I let it go because I had only seen the "Rend" in the card name. In that first version of my judgment, you had the whole 2 points in the Subchallenge section. Then, as I was rereading my judgments multiple times to fix typos, as I always do, I realized the second instance ("Malenda"). You still had 2 points. Then I reread them again looking for more typos (you'd be amazed at how many I usually find and fix) and I saw the third one ("Glen Elendra"). At that point, in this order, it was clear to me that you were doing it on purpose, I felt like I have tried to describe at the beginning of this post, I remembered that you did the same in round 1 and your judge there had already pointed it out to you, I went to check their judgment of your card in the round 1 thread (because I don't trust my memory at all), saw that they had already deducted you half a point in round 1 just because of that, that feeling I had made me agree with them, so I finally decided to do the same. This is the quick story of that half a point deduction.

I'm not sure the other two points were addressed to me, also because I agree with almost everything you've written there and I've even mentioned some of that in my own judgments, like your card being technically different despite being very (too?) similar to Plummet, and in fact I didn't give you a full zero in Uniqueness. I also didn't even mention Wing Snare at all, even if on second thought I probably should have, but that wouldn't have changed my own scores anyway. And as for Jimmy Groove's card, I have even explicitly mentioned Murder. What I might agree with is that I should have mentioned it in Viability as well as Balance, but even a half a point deduction in Jimmy Groove's Viability score (which is what I would have done in that case) wouldn't have changed the results so it would be kind of pointless now, and we're also way past the deadline anyway.

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EDIT August 1st: I want to thank everybody here in the MCC as well. Declaring a winner for July as soon as Algernone25's judgments are in will be my final act here. Just so everybody knows, I'm hosting the August MCC on MTGNexus right now. Come join us there!

Quote from bravelion83 »

On a serious note, this has been an incredible run! Thank you all for some amazing years of custom card design, for making the contests what they are today, and just for having been there, all you wonderful people who share this passion for Magic as a game and custom cards specifically with me. I hope to see as many of you as possible on Nexus. I'm already there.

Quote from Algernone25 »

Balance: 0/3 - This card can't function as intended. In the case of the other auction cards you are forced to pay life, so you can bid more than you have if you like, you just lose the game before you can do anything with the auction you won. With permanents, there's no restriction on how high you can go because the game will only make you do as much as you can - you can't sacrifice more permanents than you control, but you can bid to do exactly that, and if two players know that the bidding will just...never stop.

Pain's Reward allows you to bid more life that what you have, and technically people can just bid infinitely on that too. Yes if you overbid on that, it will (usually) just kill you. But that's the point. In this case, you would just sac all your permanents instead, effectively killing you/removing you from the game. So the card does function as intended. If you want to criticize that an opponent can always take the effect of the spell by overbidding you into calculating it's balance, of course you should. But it just means that you, as the caster, would want to cast it when the life lost wouldn't kill you and then let them win the bid to lose all their permanents.

Your argument here does not warrant a score of 0.

I imagine the problem that they were pointing out is that the card would produce a ton of draws. Imagine a case where both players had more permanents than their opponents had life, but the caster was behind (not a terribly unusual situation) -- neither player would be willing to let the bidding stop, otherwise they'd lose, so it would just go on forever and produce a draw. Admittedly the other auction cards could potentially produce draws as well, but it would usually require weird Platinum Angel or Lab Man shenanigans.

But I was wondering: did the judges grade the winning card with the assumption that it can function as a Summary Dismissal for 1 white mana? It seems like it should to me, since I don't imagine that spells and abilities can remain on the stack when you go to a new phase (although of course no card has ever allowed that before, so I can't be sure). It seemed like maybe that was what distinguished it from Holy Day but there was nothing about that in the card's reminder text so I was curious if people had realized that (or maybe I'm wrong).

(Also, I'm a little salty about my 1's for uniqueness when there's never been a multikicker card with alternate costs or a red card that allowed you to turn creatures into impulsive draws, but what can you do.)

Quote from slimytrout »

I imagine the problem that they were pointing out is that the card would produce a ton of draws.

It would only produce a ton of draws if you cast it when it can produce a draw. In which case you're doing it wrong. Like casting a shock on a three toughness creature with no follow up play. Is it as obvious of a misplay as my shock example? Certainly not. But again, my point here is that the balance of my entry does not warrant a 0. The rubric on how you evaluate balance makes it quite clear that it's not a reasonable ruling.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't my favorite design ever. In fact, I knew it was a risky a design with obvious flaws (none of which that have been pointed out thus far I didn't consider beforehand) and didn't expect it win with the MCC Rubric how it is. Still, I'd like it to be evaluated as the rubric outlines, which I think a 0 is hard to justify here.

Well, it wouldn't be wrong to cast it and produce a draw if you were behind -- in fact, it would be a positive EV choice. I'm not really trying to justify his choice of a 0 (I certainly have my own quibbles with his grading, as noted above), but I do think that a card that produces draws, say, 10% of the time it's cast would produce huge problems for organized play if it were a viable card, to the point that I think WOTC would never print such a card.

Quote from slimytrout »

Well, it wouldn't be wrong to cast it and produce a draw if you were behind -- in fact, it would be a positive EV choice. I'm not really trying to justify his choice of a 0 (I certainly have my own quibbles with his grading, as noted above), but I do think that a card that produces draws, say, 10% of the time it's cast would produce huge problems for organized play if it were a viable card, to the point that I think WOTC would never print such a card.

The rubric asks the consider casual and multiplayer formats as well, not just organized play. Their are formats besides standard where it could be printed without that concern.

Anyway, I want justification from the judge, not from a competitor.

The official winner for July is Jimmy Groove. Congratulations to them for being the winner of the last MCC on this site! Thanks to all the players, judges, and other hosts that have made possible not just this month, but all these years of MCC here.

A chapter ends, but a new one begins. The MCC isn't over. I'm hosting August myself on MTGNexus. Join us there!

The reasoning for the 0 is this - since other auction cards force you to bid life, there becomes a cutoff point where you have to stop - that is, your life total. If you ever go beyond that, your opponents stop, and let you die at the next SBA check. Your card creates a situation where if it ever passes a cutoff point, you CANNOT stop bidding because you'll instantly lose. Going back to your argument of "shocking a x/3 with no follow up" - you're right. There is no reason not to open the bidding with a lethal amount of damage, to where if the bidding ever stops they're either dead or left with no board. And there's no way you can defend a 5-mana "target player loses the game" being balanced whatsoever. That's the logic behind that 0.

Slimytrout: The odd multikicker effect is cool, and that design space is neat. I do appreciate that. But the fact still remains it's a very VERY close imitator of Commune with Lava, and as I laid out in my Scoring Outline, I deduct 1-2 points for cards that are functional reprints or have the same front-end effect but operate a bit differently in the backend application. With how close it was, that's why I did a full 2 points.

I don't really think there's much benefit to a great deal of arguing on this point (and I want to be clear that I mean that in a nice way rather than a dismissive way - the judgements are in and final and ultimately we all have our own opinions and that's how things work and how they're supposed to work), but I do disagree that they're very VERY similar, since having to pay mana vs. creatures is a substantial difference in terms of how the cards play, as you allude to in your balance entry: Commune is basically only playable in Big Red decks that are trying to get a ton of mana and slam haymakers, whereas Molten End would be played by burn decks that are trying to pull a couple bolts/shocks off the top of their library when their creatures are blocked/wrathed.

As I said earlier, I was actually more curious about how the judges interpreted whether spells and abilities would be exiled from the stack by End It Now, since I think that's a more interesting discussion to have - thoughts?

Quote from Algernone25 »

The reasoning for the 0 is this - since other auction cards force you to bid life, there becomes a cutoff point where you have to stop - that is, your life total. If you ever go beyond that, your opponents stop, and let you die at the next SBA check. Your card creates a situation where if it ever passes a cutoff point, you CANNOT stop bidding because you'll instantly lose. Going back to your argument of "shocking a x/3 with no follow up" - you're right. There is no reason not to open the bidding with a lethal amount of damage, to where if the bidding ever stops they're either dead or left with no board. And there's no way you can defend a 5-mana "target player loses the game" being balanced whatsoever. That's the logic behind that 0.

You can stop bidding just fine. Players only lose life based on the number of permanents sacrificed. If they bid a million permanents and win but only sacrifice 6 permanents, each opponent will only lose 6 life. Lava axe is a five mana "you lose the game" if your opponent is at 5 or less life. This is only a 5 mana "you lose the game" if youre life is greater than the number of permanents they control and you have the permanents to force them to bid in a lose/lose situation. This is even more complicated in multiplayer/commander with greater life totals and multiple opponents. Compare it to things like Devouring Greed power level wise. Your evaluation is off. It's that simple.