I don't think its wordy since that implies that it's difficult to mentally process the text. As for words, I've also seen cards with more words on it, plenty of the printed by WotC themselves. Archmage Ascension? Pyromancer Ascension?
Since I'm new with this game, I don't feel too silly asking this. Several of the critiques of my cards were along the lines of "There arent many cards with type/subtype X." I was under the impression that we were more or less making cards for a new set, with the implication that any new mechanics or cards would be supported by imaginary not-yet-created cards for that set, like our cards implied that other cards exist that don't.
So... this isn't the case? Like, we're making cards that would have been added into previous sets?
Sometimes a given challenge in a CCL is meant to be inspired by or take place in an existing Magic setting, but in most cases you're given free reign to envision you own world/set. Generally whoever's moderating that month will specify. However, your fellow players only have your cards from previous rounds (and any backstory you've embellished on, which I would encourage whenever you have the time and inclination) to judge your setting by, so if you haven't established a clear theme (or if it hasn't been possible to, depending on the nature of each round's challenge), it's best to keep in mind they have to judge your work in a vacuum when designing your cards.
Some players are more forgiving about narrow effects like, for example, your Archeologist from this last round, but there are limits. In this particular case, even if a set were to include artifact lands again, I imagine there'd be no more than five or six in an entire block (and leaving less than a dozen in the entire existence of Magic), and all we know about this theoretical set is that it has one legendary artifact land. It's a bit too narrow of an effect. Searching for lands, artifacts, or both would have made it a more versatile and appealing card.
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"Suffer the little creatures, for they may yet rise up and beat you senseless."
There's been a start of a discussion on droppers in the CCL. I've noticed the trend as well, and it seems like much more people drop the CCL than, for example, the MCC.
I entered May's CCL and I'm ready to take the June CCL.
By the way is there somewhere an excel chart to keep track of the points or should I make one?
None that I had found. It can be a pain when you get people that drop, but it wasn't TOO difficult to keep track of if you know how to use excel well enough.
Generally the top two players by points from each team (8 total) move on to the first elimination round. There is no set rule for pairing people in that round, but I think most hosts pair the people from the same team. Are you saying it is unfair to the #2 person to have to face someone with more points in that round? I don't think it really matters, pairings could be random from that point as far as I'm concerned, but there is the counter-argument that being paired against the #2 player is the reward for being #1.
In other words, if you had Teams A, B, C, and D, you could pair like this:
A1 vs B1
C1 vs D1
A2 vs B2
C2 vs D2
but that would ensure that half of the #2 players advanced and one would be in the finals. If you do it A1 vs A2 etc, all of the #1 players might advance if they are actually the best, which I suppose theoretically would work out to the most exciting finals.
Really though, the random distribution of teams at the beginning makes it kind of meaningless; the best designers in the competition (whatever criteria you have for that) might all be on the same team from the start.
No I think what he's getting at is that I'm in a team of 5 (or 6 I forget). All of my team submit a card for Round 2. 2 (or 3) of those people will not get points, no matter how good their cards are.
On Team B, only 3 people submit cards. All three of those people get points, no matter how bad their card is.
No, I don't have an elegant answer, unless you save the team splitting until *after* the submissions are in (and doing it randomly), thus always creating teams with equal numbers. Then before the elimination rounds begin, it's the top 8 submitters that go through, and not the top 2 from each team.
Edit: Also, if my team critiques everyone, but only three members of Team B critique, there are less points being given out for my team than we are giving out for theirs. I really don't have an elegant solution to that one.
Why is it necessary for someone to not get points? Since they are only competing with each other, the best card should still be the top ranked.
If you are questioning the circumstances that lead to there being only a few people on the team, we'd love to hear suggestions if you have them, but the current stance is that there isn't much you can do about drop-outs.
Oooh, so once the top 8 are selected, then the points are scrubbed? I thought that the points carried over to the top 8.
It is easier to make it to top 8 with bad cards when there are only 3 people on your team due to drop outs, but like you said, there isn't really much you can do to prevent or adjust for this. Moving people around would make it unfair because then the free points just for being on a small team end up effecting other players.
Why is it necessary for someone to not get points? Since they are only competing with each other, the best card should still be the top ranked.
You're missing my point slightly. I shall attempt to elaborate (NOTE VERY WELL PLEASE: This example exaggerated both for simplicity and a little humour)
Team A has members 1,2,3,4,5,6
Team B (through dropouts) has members 7,8,9
The challenge is: Design a sorcery that wins you the game.
Team A's cards are:
1: 1: Win the game
2: 2: Win the game
3: 3: Win the game
4: 4: Win the game
5: 5: Win the game
6: 6: Win the game
Team B's Cards are:
7: 1: Win the game
8: 2: Win the game
9: 3: Win the game
Critique round!
(A --> B, B --> A)
Team A's crits all rank the cards: 9, 8, 7
Team B's crits all rank the cards: 6, 5, 4
Person 9, who has designed a card which, if he had been on Team A, would not have got him any points now has points. This makes person 3 very sad; he designed the same card, but has no points!
When it comes to the elimination round, (say cut to top 4 as there are only 2 teams in this example): Persons 6, 5, 9, and 8 go through. This makes person 7 sad; he is penalised simply because he was in a stronger group than person 5. Randomising membership in a group after card submissions but before scoring would eliminate this situation.
@Paradigm Eighty: The point of moving people around is to put them in equal sized groups, which is to say, only those that are still "in" get put into a group at all.
Yeah Viperion is right. What he's trying to say is that in a team of three people, you have to really screw up repeteadly in order NOT to pass to the finals. In any other team, you have to regularly produce the best cards if you want a chance to pass. This seems more unfair when the whole team had a poor round (as it was in this case) and you have to award them points that you usually wouldn't if there were more people and more chances for someone to produce a quality card.
I'm really starting to get fed up with the problem of droppers, especially given that some of them are repeating offenders month after month. I understand that no one can control when real life throws some curve balls at you, but in most cases, we're talking of simply being too busy which is something you can predict BEFORE entering the game. If you know that you are going to have exams/trips/surgery/deadlines/etc please just don't enter even if you believe that for some magical reason you'll be able to squeeze some time for the contest somehow (protip: you won't.) The result would be the same for you in the end -except that you'd have wasted the time you invested in the first rounds before dropping- but will screw the contest.
I propose that droppers be penalized with being banned from entering the month after they dropped. Yeah, from time to time, it will punish unfairly people who honestly had to drop for unforeseen reasons, but most of the time it will keep away (or force to stay) poor time planners and people that simply get bored or discouraged after not getting good results.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
I don't think there is a perfect solution; people will still need or want to drop sometimes even with a penalty, and there will always be the possibility you'll end up on a small team in round 2 or 3. Shifting players between teams is an inelegant answer, and opens up more room for argument depending on what method is used to determine who shifts where.
The only advice I can provide all of us is to remember that the CCL is meant to be a casual competition, and it ultimately detracts from the fun of the game to worry too deeply about perfect balance and fairness. If some players have to work harder to stand out one month than they did the last, or vice-versa, our best option may be to just consider that part of the challenge.
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"Suffer the little creatures, for they may yet rise up and beat you senseless."
Yeah but one thing is casual competition and other, no competition whatsoever. If you can top 8 a given contest with hardly making any effort, where's the drive to do your best? Where's the challenge to test yourself against your peers' prowess? It makes ME (and I'd wager, other players) want to drop because the whole exercise becomes even more pointless than it is. If you invite people to not observe at least a modicum of seriousness "because it's a casual thing," you'll end with something absolutely no one cares for, which spells the end of the whole thing.
I'm pretty sure that the CCL is already positioned in the mind of several people as "that contest I don't have to care much about and I can drop whenever I like." As an organizer you should understand why this is bad: your are investing time and effort in keeping the game running, while players in the end don't give enough of a damn to post well-thought submisions/critics, or observe the deadlines or well, continue playing at all. For the players that actually care is also bad, not only because the imparity explained by Viperion, but also because the votes given by a tiny team have too much power: getting a vote from a member of a tiny team is very valuable, while receiving no votes from him or her is extremey crippling.
The ban I propose may certainly not eradicate the problem. It may, however minimize it either by forcing people commit more carefully or by weeding out the ones that simply cannot care enough. Dropping will still happen, but hopefully, not by the dozen as it's the case presently.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
I do understand the point that Maokun and Viperion are making, however I am unsure what can be done to address the problem. The one suggestion I have heard is to prevent people who drop from competing next month, but that seems harsh; looking at the current round 3, Jimmy Groove, brasildude, Lyzl, and BlackBull have all dropped, and those are all people who have competed in the CCL finals in the past, IIRC.
Two ideas I have just thinking now are reducing the number of teams to just two, which should ensure a reasonable number on both teams (but increases the amount of cards to look at for critiques); having the host try to select teams to avoid having one team with a lot of unreliable players (I don't think this is really practical or advisable); or eliminating teams altogether and having people choose a Top 3 (or Top 5?) out of all the other cards (even more work than two teams). Anybody have thoughts on those?
This is a pretty interesting discussion. I agree this is a casual competition, but that doesn't mean some of us aren't taking it seriously. I like Mao's idea of banning a dropper from the next month. Also, not just droppers are a problem, but people who do halfass crits or only post the top 3. I get that some times life gets in the way, but lets be honest. It's not that hard to design a card in your head between classes, on the walk to work or school, while laying in bed, etc etc. These games don't really take that much time. Crits take me about half an hour. It's not that hard to squeeze that in. /rant.
@Gerrard: I think the two teams idea is pretty decent, but also if we do that, we shouldn't post just top three, but rank each player in an ordered list. With like 12 players per team and only three getting points, you'd have a lot of low numbers nd probably a lot of tied scores.
Real quick though, in the scores section, what does the (+x,+x) thing mean?
My 2 cents here. I think that ideal groups should have from 5 to seven members in it. Whenever someone drops there could be a minimum limit for a team, say 5 or 4. When a team reaches that limit that team could be dissolved and players put on other teams. That way teams could stay balanced. Otherwise you could take any number of players from other teams and put them in the team that has least players. I believe the latter could work better since that way you won't mess with the last rounds of the contest. What do you think about it?
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"Those who endure in the face of suffering, those whose faith shines long in evil days, they shall see salvation." -Song of All, canto 904
Three teams could work I guess, but you'd have a repeat of critiquing in the first three rounds. It shouldn't be too hard (for the players) to change from a Top 3 to a Top 4 or 5 if we had fewer, larger teams.
Paradigm Eighty, Twilight Kiwi is just displaying the math for your scores. You should have +1 for doing Top 3, +1 for doing critiques, and then +3,+2, or +1 for each 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place (respectively) that you got from the critiques. For example, I got one 2nd place and did critiques and Top 3, so I got +1+1+2. I think there were only two critiques done, so the total points possible for our team would be 8 (3*2 for first place, +2 for the feedback you do). I don't think Kiwi has this step up yet, but that means my score right not is 50 (4/8,*100 to make it a big number).
Oh duh, it just hit me. I used to run a contest (Transmogrify That Card) and when a team got too small, I destroyed that team and relocated the survivors among the other teams. That's exactly what can be done when we get a team reduced to three: move each person to another team. I think that's a much better solution than moving people from other teams into the small one.
I'm calling it right now- worst rare in the set. Even good limited players will find better bombs at common and uncommon no sweat. Worst. Episode. Ever.
I really do predict this to be our worst rare in set award winner. I'd be happier opening a jar of eyeballs, so I think anything worse is highly unlikely. This card wont just have zero constructed potential, but not be significantly better than a mass of ghouls in a draft.
Two ideas I have just thinking now are reducing the number of teams to just two, which should ensure a reasonable number on both teams (but increases the amount of cards to look at for critiques)
Having been a part of the CCL since its creation, I can tell you there was a time when it was so unpopular, we'd only have 8 people or so for the entire month. As it began to grow in popularity, we started a two team format for logistical reasons, but when those teams got to 15-16 players each once the CCL's popularity really kicked up, we had to go to a 4 team format to avoid 2-hour (quality) card-critiquing sessions. Trust me, grading 16-18 cards every couple of days is not fun.
While we were doing two teams, we tried a method where a person only had to critique at least half of the opposing team to get the critique bonus, but it just didn't feel right. With as popular as the CCL is now, I think the 4 team format is just fine (and quite necessary, honestly.) I really don't see a problem with it.
Asking out a girl is like trying to cast a first turn Necropotence. Sometimes the other player will have the Force of Will to say no. You shouldn't let that stop you from trying it.
Now, I just need to figure out what to do instead...
So... this isn't the case? Like, we're making cards that would have been added into previous sets?
Some players are more forgiving about narrow effects like, for example, your Archeologist from this last round, but there are limits. In this particular case, even if a set were to include artifact lands again, I imagine there'd be no more than five or six in an entire block (and leaving less than a dozen in the entire existence of Magic), and all we know about this theoretical set is that it has one legendary artifact land. It's a bit too narrow of an effect. Searching for lands, artifacts, or both would have made it a more versatile and appealing card.
My First (And Probably Only) MCC Perfect Score: December 09 (Round One)
Maybe we should discuss it here?
Sets - Arcania
Competitions - CCL: March 2011, April 2011
Is there a final scores list anywhere? I'd like to see where I ranked overall.
By the way is there somewhere an excel chart to keep track of the points or should I make one?
None that I had found. It can be a pain when you get people that drop, but it wasn't TOO difficult to keep track of if you know how to use excel well enough.
Isn't it the case that when we get to the final rounds, it's the top player from each team that competes against the top player of each other team?
Isn't this kind of unfair? Or is there something I don't get?
In other words, if you had Teams A, B, C, and D, you could pair like this:
A1 vs B1
C1 vs D1
A2 vs B2
C2 vs D2
but that would ensure that half of the #2 players advanced and one would be in the finals. If you do it A1 vs A2 etc, all of the #1 players might advance if they are actually the best, which I suppose theoretically would work out to the most exciting finals.
Really though, the random distribution of teams at the beginning makes it kind of meaningless; the best designers in the competition (whatever criteria you have for that) might all be on the same team from the start.
On Team B, only 3 people submit cards. All three of those people get points, no matter how bad their card is.
No, I don't have an elegant answer, unless you save the team splitting until *after* the submissions are in (and doing it randomly), thus always creating teams with equal numbers. Then before the elimination rounds begin, it's the top 8 submitters that go through, and not the top 2 from each team.
Edit: Also, if my team critiques everyone, but only three members of Team B critique, there are less points being given out for my team than we are giving out for theirs. I really don't have an elegant solution to that one.
Viperion
If you are questioning the circumstances that lead to there being only a few people on the team, we'd love to hear suggestions if you have them, but the current stance is that there isn't much you can do about drop-outs.
It is easier to make it to top 8 with bad cards when there are only 3 people on your team due to drop outs, but like you said, there isn't really much you can do to prevent or adjust for this. Moving people around would make it unfair because then the free points just for being on a small team end up effecting other players.
You're missing my point slightly. I shall attempt to elaborate (NOTE VERY WELL PLEASE: This example exaggerated both for simplicity and a little humour)
Team A has members 1,2,3,4,5,6
Team B (through dropouts) has members 7,8,9
The challenge is: Design a sorcery that wins you the game.
Team A's cards are:
1: 1: Win the game
2: 2: Win the game
3: 3: Win the game
4: 4: Win the game
5: 5: Win the game
6: 6: Win the game
Team B's Cards are:
7: 1: Win the game
8: 2: Win the game
9: 3: Win the game
Critique round!
(A --> B, B --> A)
Team A's crits all rank the cards: 9, 8, 7
Team B's crits all rank the cards: 6, 5, 4
Person 9, who has designed a card which, if he had been on Team A, would not have got him any points now has points. This makes person 3 very sad; he designed the same card, but has no points!
When it comes to the elimination round, (say cut to top 4 as there are only 2 teams in this example): Persons 6, 5, 9, and 8 go through. This makes person 7 sad; he is penalised simply because he was in a stronger group than person 5. Randomising membership in a group after card submissions but before scoring would eliminate this situation.
@Paradigm Eighty: The point of moving people around is to put them in equal sized groups, which is to say, only those that are still "in" get put into a group at all.
Viperion
I'm really starting to get fed up with the problem of droppers, especially given that some of them are repeating offenders month after month. I understand that no one can control when real life throws some curve balls at you, but in most cases, we're talking of simply being too busy which is something you can predict BEFORE entering the game. If you know that you are going to have exams/trips/surgery/deadlines/etc please just don't enter even if you believe that for some magical reason you'll be able to squeeze some time for the contest somehow (protip: you won't.) The result would be the same for you in the end -except that you'd have wasted the time you invested in the first rounds before dropping- but will screw the contest.
I propose that droppers be penalized with being banned from entering the month after they dropped. Yeah, from time to time, it will punish unfairly people who honestly had to drop for unforeseen reasons, but most of the time it will keep away (or force to stay) poor time planners and people that simply get bored or discouraged after not getting good results.
The only advice I can provide all of us is to remember that the CCL is meant to be a casual competition, and it ultimately detracts from the fun of the game to worry too deeply about perfect balance and fairness. If some players have to work harder to stand out one month than they did the last, or vice-versa, our best option may be to just consider that part of the challenge.
My First (And Probably Only) MCC Perfect Score: December 09 (Round One)
I'm pretty sure that the CCL is already positioned in the mind of several people as "that contest I don't have to care much about and I can drop whenever I like." As an organizer you should understand why this is bad: your are investing time and effort in keeping the game running, while players in the end don't give enough of a damn to post well-thought submisions/critics, or observe the deadlines or well, continue playing at all. For the players that actually care is also bad, not only because the imparity explained by Viperion, but also because the votes given by a tiny team have too much power: getting a vote from a member of a tiny team is very valuable, while receiving no votes from him or her is extremey crippling.
The ban I propose may certainly not eradicate the problem. It may, however minimize it either by forcing people commit more carefully or by weeding out the ones that simply cannot care enough. Dropping will still happen, but hopefully, not by the dozen as it's the case presently.
Two ideas I have just thinking now are reducing the number of teams to just two, which should ensure a reasonable number on both teams (but increases the amount of cards to look at for critiques); having the host try to select teams to avoid having one team with a lot of unreliable players (I don't think this is really practical or advisable); or eliminating teams altogether and having people choose a Top 3 (or Top 5?) out of all the other cards (even more work than two teams). Anybody have thoughts on those?
@Gerrard: I think the two teams idea is pretty decent, but also if we do that, we shouldn't post just top three, but rank each player in an ordered list. With like 12 players per team and only three getting points, you'd have a lot of low numbers nd probably a lot of tied scores.
Real quick though, in the scores section, what does the (+x,+x) thing mean?
Paradigm Eighty, Twilight Kiwi is just displaying the math for your scores. You should have +1 for doing Top 3, +1 for doing critiques, and then +3,+2, or +1 for each 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place (respectively) that you got from the critiques. For example, I got one 2nd place and did critiques and Top 3, so I got +1+1+2. I think there were only two critiques done, so the total points possible for our team would be 8 (3*2 for first place, +2 for the feedback you do). I don't think Kiwi has this step up yet, but that means my score right not is 50 (4/8,*100 to make it a big number).
Man, I miss TTC... I should give it another run.
Having been a part of the CCL since its creation, I can tell you there was a time when it was so unpopular, we'd only have 8 people or so for the entire month. As it began to grow in popularity, we started a two team format for logistical reasons, but when those teams got to 15-16 players each once the CCL's popularity really kicked up, we had to go to a 4 team format to avoid 2-hour (quality) card-critiquing sessions. Trust me, grading 16-18 cards every couple of days is not fun.
While we were doing two teams, we tried a method where a person only had to critique at least half of the opposing team to get the critique bonus, but it just didn't feel right. With as popular as the CCL is now, I think the 4 team format is just fine (and quite necessary, honestly.) I really don't see a problem with it.
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