Wow does all this talk about flaws in the voting system make me uncomfortable when I've been at the top for a while :S Can't say it isn't true but I'm not asking to benefit from it and personally try always to vote for the 2 best cards and eschew tactical voting (including voting for Piar's card yesterday when that vote helped put him ahead of me).
Anyhow, best of luck to all for the end and looking forward to another awesome year of card designing in 2014.
Re: today's submission: a) Players gaining triggered abilities is compatible with current rules just fine; and b) If textbox size and wackiness were no barriers, this card would have been worded:
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When Living Mirror dies, target opponent gets seven misfortune counters. (At the beginning of each player's upkeep, if that player is misfortunate, they lose a misfortune counter and 1 life. If a misfortunate player would win a coin flip, instead they lose that flip.)
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Incubation Chamber :symg::symg:
Enchantment (U)
Graft 1 (This permanent enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, you may move a +1/+1 counter from this permanent onto it.)
Other noncreature permanents you control have Graft 1.
The people voting for this card have clearly never played with Graft on Magic Online
(I do like the design, but the thought of having all those Yes/No triggers every time either player makes a creature...)
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One thing that I believe makes designing fair custom cards tedious is the existing card pool of the actual game. What I mean is that, for example, this card is very fairly costed and reasonable... but still painfully worse than Sword of Fire and Ice.
I tend to ignore Mirrodin's Equipment for most balance purposes; they hadn't figured it out at the time and undercosted and/or under-raritied a lot of cards like Bonesplitter, Empyrial Armor, Loxodon Warhammer, and that's before you even get to the Swords and Skullclamp. It didn't help that they decided to have the Scars Swords synch up with the undercosted originals...
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Based on Glaring Spotlight, this wording should be "Creatures your opponents control may be targets of abilities of ~ as though they had no abilities."
I tried this approach but the original card gets around Ivory Mask also so I tried to work that in.
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seems a tricky thing to word clean & clear, you have pretty fresh approach.
i'm thinking the static ability could be stuck on the end of the activated ability, like, "~ damages target X. this target selection can't be prevented by abilities?"
dunno, maybe the extra rulesy sounding "selection" ain't great. and "prevented" could be some other generic synonym (maybe one that doesn't already have another meaning in a different context). maybe this specific counter to a certain threat is kinda niche too
Actually, the card doesn't work at all under either the original wording or your proposed wording.
The original wording works on the assumption that the creature does the targeting, which is untrue. Yours doesn't use valid rules terms.
This kind of ability is hard to phrase correctly but something like "Creatures and players with hexproof, shroud and protection can be the target of abilities of ~ as though they didn't have those abilities" should work. You can't make it work without explicitly naming which abilities you want to circumvent, I don't think.
EDIT: It's possible that "You may choose targets for abilities of CARD as though those targets had no abilities" may work, but it's a strange fruit.
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As far as how I vote, I've said in the past that I don't normally vote for people ahead of me in the leaderboard. It doesn't matter who is ahead of me, I just have higher standards - basically, "is this finished WotC-grade material" - for the people ahead of me. That said, normally my votes aren't enough to switch who wins, mostly because it's very rare that anyone votes the same way as me.
Well, it's up to you how you vote - that being said, I am going to lay out my reasons arguing against this approach.
Personally, I try to be as fair as I can be - I vote for the cards I think are the best and ignore the standings. It's in the interest of everyone that the votes represent the best two cards and not the two competitors I most want to get votes.
For example, whilst this "my votes aren't important so I can tactically vote how I like" thinking doesn't work if everyone uses it. If the contest is about making good cards, hold them all to the same standard. If it's about improving your own chances, then vote for people behind you. There's no reason why you should use your relative table position as an arbitrary delineator of card quality, other than to suppress votes to people who you are in competition with. Otherwise, why use yourself? Why not me, or Maokun, or any other arbitrary competitor?
I am proud to have accumulated a joint top vote score in September despite not resorting to anything other than voting for the cards and voting frequently for some of my closest competitors, when they made top-quality cards. I hope that people voted for my cards when they thought they were the best, and not only when it served their goals.
More generally, a great way of making this would be to have submissions made privately and the identity of creators not known when voting occurred. That being said it's a lot of extra work and I think an honour system is probably better. It is, after all, only a game.
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Thanks for the compliment Good luck to all the competitors, and thanks for everyone's votes and interesting cards to vote for over the month.
My final card was designed because I imagined a buddy-cop movie with a strait-laced Azorius rules stickler being paired up with a bitter, loose cannon Boros veteran, and the idea amused me (:
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I misclicked in today's poll. My vote was meant for Maokun's cute squirrel but accidentally ended up in Savia's box. Please change that when you count the score, and my apologies to everyone involved.
: ' (
(just kidding, I voted for the squirrel too!)
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Anyhow, best of luck to all for the end and looking forward to another awesome year of card designing in 2014.
Re: today's submission: a) Players gaining triggered abilities is compatible with current rules just fine; and b) If textbox size and wackiness were no barriers, this card would have been worded:
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The people voting for this card have clearly never played with Graft on Magic Online
(I do like the design, but the thought of having all those Yes/No triggers every time either player makes a creature...)
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I tend to ignore Mirrodin's Equipment for most balance purposes; they hadn't figured it out at the time and undercosted and/or under-raritied a lot of cards like Bonesplitter, Empyrial Armor, Loxodon Warhammer, and that's before you even get to the Swords and Skullclamp. It didn't help that they decided to have the Scars Swords synch up with the undercosted originals...
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Valid rules term
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If only templating worked this way
I was wracking my brains thinking of the best things to do with this effect. I got Elesh Norn but this might be better!
Not that it would stop me from always drawing my 1 Iona in my opening hand if this card actually existed
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I tried this approach but the original card gets around Ivory Mask also so I tried to work that in.
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Actually, the card doesn't work at all under either the original wording or your proposed wording.
The original wording works on the assumption that the creature does the targeting, which is untrue. Yours doesn't use valid rules terms.
This kind of ability is hard to phrase correctly but something like "Creatures and players with hexproof, shroud and protection can be the target of abilities of ~ as though they didn't have those abilities" should work. You can't make it work without explicitly naming which abilities you want to circumvent, I don't think.
EDIT: It's possible that "You may choose targets for abilities of CARD as though those targets had no abilities" may work, but it's a strange fruit.
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WHY NOT BOTH
SNOW ARTIFACT CREATURE - CONSTRUCT ILLUSION SHAPESHIFTER SPELLSHAPER BRUSHWAGG
(and of course both are largely irrelevant, because the Clone effect removes all the exist super/types anyway)
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I'm not imagining a return of Snow here... Plenty of non-Snow creatures with icy themes in blue.
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Well, it's up to you how you vote - that being said, I am going to lay out my reasons arguing against this approach.
Personally, I try to be as fair as I can be - I vote for the cards I think are the best and ignore the standings. It's in the interest of everyone that the votes represent the best two cards and not the two competitors I most want to get votes.
For example, whilst this "my votes aren't important so I can tactically vote how I like" thinking doesn't work if everyone uses it. If the contest is about making good cards, hold them all to the same standard. If it's about improving your own chances, then vote for people behind you. There's no reason why you should use your relative table position as an arbitrary delineator of card quality, other than to suppress votes to people who you are in competition with. Otherwise, why use yourself? Why not me, or Maokun, or any other arbitrary competitor?
I am proud to have accumulated a joint top vote score in September despite not resorting to anything other than voting for the cards and voting frequently for some of my closest competitors, when they made top-quality cards. I hope that people voted for my cards when they thought they were the best, and not only when it served their goals.
More generally, a great way of making this would be to have submissions made privately and the identity of creators not known when voting occurred. That being said it's a lot of extra work and I think an honour system is probably better. It is, after all, only a game.
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I'm taking a break from it for October as I have a trip to GP San Jose to plan!
I run a Tumblr for Magic-related statistics, graphs, and quizzes. Come check it out!
My final card was designed because I imagined a buddy-cop movie with a strait-laced Azorius rules stickler being paired up with a bitter, loose cannon Boros veteran, and the idea amused me (:
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: ' (
(just kidding, I voted for the squirrel too!)
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Also, everybody's cards today are weird. Mine included. Guess it was just a weird ideas day
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