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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

My judgments for the February final will be delayed until tomorrow, partially to keep in account further scoring questions since multiple contestants have brought them up and partially out of physical exhaustion.
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

My February final judgments are in.
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.

The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)

Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

Final standings:
Subject16: 20.5 + 21 + 20.5 = 62
slimytrout: 18.5 + 22 + 21 = 61.5
jamblock: 21.5 + 20.5 + 19 = 61
Kypster: 19 + 19 + 21 = 59

That was extremely close! Great work everyone! But the winner may be only one.
All hail Subject16!

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Post by Ink-Treader » 4 years ago

My judgments for Round 1 are finished.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

My judgments and the next round will be up in the morning.
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.

The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)

Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

A hypothetical question. How would MCC handle a new card template? Should the player provide the render then?
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Post by marioguy3 » 4 years ago

Oops. I missed the deadline for the MCC Round 2 for March. Even if I weren't busy with finals, I couldn't think of any card to post for the round anyway.

Good luck to the contestants!
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Post by bravelion83 » 4 years ago

Ryder wrote:
4 years ago
A hypothetical question. How would MCC handle a new card template? Should the player provide the render then?
@Ryder I didn't see the mention here and it didn't notify me, so I've only seen this now. We've talked about it behind the scenes if I recall correctly, but I will answer here publicly.
It depends on what you actually mean. If it's a new wording, you can use some reminder text or just use it without saying anything else. You can't use design notes or anything like that. If it's a new frame, do your best with the text card to replicate it in text form and I'd advise you to make the optional render to show what the new frame looks like. The render will be ignored in judging, but your judge can at least see and understand how your new frame works. Without the render, they'd just probably not understand the card, both making it very hard to judge it and potentially lowering your scores.
This is my own advice, @void_nothing is more than welcome to add more if he wants.
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MCC - Winner (9): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019, Jan Mar 2022, Apr 2023 || Host (30): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last on MTGS), Aug 2019 (first on MTGN) Oct 2019, Jan Jun 2020 Apr Oct 2021, Feb May Sep Dec 2022, Mar Jun Sep Dec 2023, Mar 2024 || Judge (58): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last on MTGS), every month from Aug 2019 (first on MTGN) to Feb 2020, May Jun 2020, Mar Apr Sep Oct 2021, Feb May Sep Dec 2022, Mar May Jun Sep Dec 2023, Jan Mar 2024
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Post by StonerOfKruphix » 4 years ago

slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
(0/3) Balance – Obviously conspiracies are inherently unbalanced, which is why they're banned in all tournament play. But even by that standard, this is ridiculously broken. You can basically think of it as having a 0-mana 4/4 in your hand at the start of every game – sometimes it's worse (when you mulligan a good hand to get the rhino and then are forced to mulligan further as a result), but sometimes it's better (when you would have had to mulligan anyway) and they should more or less balance out. Compare this to the most similar exisiting conspiracy, which gave you a 1/1 defender, and you can see how truly busted this is.
I can totally see your point, a 4/4 trample on turn 1 is busted. In my defense, the card is a windmill-slam first-pick Conspiracy by design, since the games in Conspiracy limited are played as a 4-player FFA. The card is meant to be played in a 4-player match, where a 4/4 on turn one puts a target on you right off the start. In addition, you still have to kill 3 players who can team up against you if you start focusing one of them by attacking them with the token.
That said, I can understand where your judgment comes from and I don't want you to see this as my critique of it, I just wanted to explain the design of my card.

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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

I definitely understand your point, and I'm sure if this card existed people would lose games despite having it, mostly because of the multiplayer/political aspect of conspiracy drafts. But if you look at the existing conspiracies, you'll see that R&D used two approaches in order to help balance them: 1) to make up for the fact that you have access to it no matter what, they used the "Hidden Agenda" mechanic and 2) to make up for the sheer power of some of them, they imposed significant deckbuilding constraints. I would have been much more likely to give your submission a reasonable balance score if it used either of those approaches. (I'm not counting the mulliganing part, because, as I said, on average that's not functionally different from making you spend a card to get the rhino.)

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Post by Kypster » 4 years ago

While I'm aware I'm out this round regardless, I'd like to just clarify this point on my judgment as I believe it's incorrect.
slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
(1/3) Viability – Multiple problems here. First, it doesn't work, because the first ability doesn't actually suspend it, it just puts time counters on it, and those don't have any inherent rules baggage – you need an extra sentence saying "It gains suspend."
The spell already has Suspend as part of the card. Thus, if it's exiled with time counters, the existing Suspend ability will trigger during the upkeep and remove a counter. So you're correct in that the time counters do not inherently have rules baggage, but the preexisting instance of Suspend does.

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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

Yes, you are correct, my apologies. I should have read the comprehensive rules text more carefully, because the relevant text is "A card is "suspended" if it's in the exile zone, has suspend, and has a time counter on it" and your card would meet all three of those criteria. I will adjust the viability score accordingly.

EDIT: I've now made that change plus one other (in the Quality section of Henlock's judgement), but the standings are unchanged. Sorry for my initial mistakes, folks -- this was a tough round to judge on quality/viability because so many of the cards were pushing into unused space.

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Post by Kypster » 4 years ago

No worries, it was a tricky challenge to work with as it is so unprecedented.Thanks for the judgements and for being open to feedback! See you in future months. :D

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

My judgments and next round to come tomorrow morning.
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.

The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)

Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

@Stankweed Imp You may want to finalize your submission ;)

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Post by Ink-Treader » 4 years ago

Finished my judgments for Round 3. If you have any concerns, let me know.

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Post by Stankweed Imp » 4 years ago

I looked up Oona to check on where her character was left, and I found that the last line of the MTG Wiki entry about her was too similar to your flavor text to be coincidence. Obviously fine to take inspiration from things like this, since it's nearly impossible to keep track of all the various magic lore that's accumulated over the last twenty years, but this is a little too close to plagiarism for me to let it go by.
Solid critique, I loved the legendary equipment personally so was a bit bummed to come up against it :)

Just wondering about the above, I based my card directly on that piece of lore from the wiki. It's pretty topdown so I had to be as specific as I could to reference it otherwise Oona being a spirit and the 3 faeries representing the clique would have made no sense without it.

I'll try and create my own lore based around what I read in the future. Is it ok to build a card that goes against the established lore? I guess there have been plenty of timeshifts and alternate realities in mtg. Cheers.

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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough: I don't mean there's anything wrong with copying the lore -- that's totally standard practice and is entirely acceptable. What I was critiquing is that you (almost) copied the actual words that someone else wrote and used them on your own card. It would have been totally fine if your entry had said something like: "Her power broken but her mind unharmed, Oona and her new clique plot to restore her to her rightful place." The meaning would have been identical, but (crucially) you wouldn't have actually been using the same words as the MTG Wiki authors. As in all other sorts of writing, it's totally fine to take inspiration/concepts/plot points from other works (for example, A New Hope doesn't have two original ideas to rub together), but it's not okay to actually copy their language (here's a link to Jane Goodall getting in trouble for lifting passages from Wikipedia). Does that make more sense?

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Post by Stankweed Imp » 4 years ago

slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough: I don't mean there's anything wrong with copying the lore -- that's totally standard practice and is entirely acceptable. What I was critiquing is that you (almost) copied the actual words that someone else wrote and used them on your own card. It would have been totally fine if your entry had said something like: "Her power broken but her mind unharmed, Oona and her new clique plot to restore her to her rightful place." The meaning would have been identical, but (crucially) you wouldn't have actually been using the same words as the MTG Wiki authors. As in all other sorts of writing, it's totally fine to take inspiration/concepts/plot points from other works (for example, A New Hope doesn't have two original ideas to rub together), but it's not okay to actually copy their language (here's a link to Jane Goodall getting in trouble for lifting passages from Wikipedia). Does that make more sense?
Yeah that's fair I just wanted to make sure I didn't repeat it in future designs. I think I was looking at the wiki as more official then it is, obviously your right it would be someones personal summary. I'll def avoid that in future. Cheers.

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

It's past the deadline, but I'd still like to know more about the deductions in Balance of my card.
Ink-Treader wrote:
4 years ago
Overall, I think this is just fine for typical Constructed formats, but more casual formats might find people breaking this.
Isn't this like the best possible rating a card can get? I mean, fair in Constructed (and Limited), but breakable in Casual?

@slimytrout, could you please elaborate on why it's "hard for you to picture this being balanced"? Is it the "symmetric scry" at + that got you worried?

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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

As I said, I just think it's incredibly hard to balance two-mana planeswalkers. I think yours is a solid effort, hence why I didn't give it an even lower grade, but I think because of the fact that you can get them down *so* early, it's just too easy to start accumulating value if they have reasonably strong abilities, a la Wrenn and Six. The easiest answer is to just water down the abilities, but, as we saw with Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, this just makes them unplayable at a certain point. Is it possible that you have found the zone of playability? Yes. Do I think it's likely? No - I think that this would be too strong in any format with blue combo decks, where you just want to dig for your pieces and then ultimate on the turn you go off. Hope this helps!

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
As I said, I just think it's incredibly hard to balance two-mana planeswalkers. I think yours is a solid effort, hence why I didn't give it an even lower grade, but I think because of the fact that you can get them down *so* early, it's just too easy to start accumulating value if they have reasonably strong abilities, a la Wrenn and Six. The easiest answer is to just water down the abilities, but, as we saw with Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, this just makes them unplayable at a certain point. Is it possible that you have found the zone of playability? Yes. Do I think it's likely? No - I think that this would be too strong in any format with blue combo decks, where you just want to dig for your pieces and then ultimate on the turn you go off. Hope this helps!
Okay, but what format do you have in mind? In Limited and Standard, combo is usually relatively weak, and if it's not, it's healthy for the format. In Modern, games are most often decided by turn 3 or 4, so dropping a Mihr wouldn't matter much, especially since it can also get your opponent what they want. Same applies to Legacy. Mihr has no crazy combo potential like Wrenn and Six + Wasteland. Has no board influence. Commander? Maybe as the Commander, locking yourself in mono-U? Not impressed at all. Anything I'm missing?

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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

Well, then you've just outlined why Mihr would probably barely get played, which results in a poor balance score ;)

More seriously, though, I've talked about this a bit in other judgements I've done, drawing on things Maro has said: some categories of things are just inherently hard to balance, and 2-mana walkers are one of them. I doubt that you're going to change my mind on this just by presenting theoretical arguments - since we don't have the resources to playtest these cards in all formats (tbh, no one really does), judges just have to go with their guts on cards like these. If R&D eventually makes one that is balanced, then maybe I'll be singing a different tune, but until then I think I'm going to be pretty hard to persuade.

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Post by Ryder » 4 years ago

Fair enough, thanks.

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

Sorry for the slight delay - March round 3 judgments going up soon, then March final round soon, and concurrently April's first round and judge signups will be going up this afternoon too!
Psst, check the second page of Custom Card Contests & Games! Because of the daily contests, a lot of games fall down to there.

The greatest (fake) pro wrestling on the internet - Collaborative Create-A-Booster - My random creations (updated regularly)

Important Facts: Colorless is not a color, Wastes is not a land type, Changeling is not a creature type

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