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BOVINE
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Post by BOVINE » 4 years ago

Oh ok I understand. That card is for a format with a single shared library that contains 100 nonland cards. I see what you all are saying now :)
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Post by Flatline » 4 years ago

slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
hm: flatline (great idea, but bravelion83 posted almost the exact same card back in november, even down to the creature types)
If accidentally coming up with the same card as the great and illustrious @bravelion83 is wrong, then I don't want to be right. :) I even almost gave my card the same name! But seriously, bravelion's version is Mardu Scout with cycling, but for a slightly less restrictive mana cost. Our cards are actually different takes on the same ability mashup idea.
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Post by slimytrout » 4 years ago

Yeah, I definitely didn't mean to suggest there's anything wrong with it! I think it's a fun and creative idea and I'm sure it was a classic case of convergent design -- plus, you're totally correct about the power level concerns of bravelion's version, which I suspect is why I didn't vote for it back in November. The only reason I mentioned it in the thread as a justification for not voting for it is that it's similar to (although obviously different in some important ways) accidentally re-designing a card/ability suite that R&D had already come up with - once the idea is out there, seeing it for a second time doesn't spark elicit the same "cool!" feeling.

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Post by bravelion83 » 4 years ago

Flatline wrote:
4 years ago
If accidentally coming up with the same card as the great and illustrious bravelion83 is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Thank you @Flatline. I could very easily say the opposite. I remember that card (can't quote it because it's archived), Mardu Scout was my actual inspiration for it. It was my card for November 3rd (the advantages of keeping all your designs in MSE files). After all, parallel design is a thing.
Last edited by bravelion83 4 years ago, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by Flatline » 4 years ago

@slimytrout ...I know what you mean. I've seen different takes on the same idea a lot over the years. After a while, it's hard to get excited about an idea you've seen before.
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Post by Flatline » 4 years ago

slimytrout wrote:
4 years ago
Flatline, you're totally right - I always have trouble estimating the strength of multiplayer cards, cuz the one I designed seems like a perfectly acceptable rate to me and I honestly don't understand how Curse of Verbosity is balanced at all.
Yeah, things released specifically for EDH tend to have a higher ceiling as far as power level is concerned. If it weren't for Curse of Verbosity, I may have voted for your card, but it's hard to vote for a card when there's a real version that is very close mechanically, but better. I mostly brought it up just to make sure you were aware of Curse of Verbosity's existence. There have been many times over the years that I have posted a card I really liked that received little, to no love from the voters. Every time this happens, I really want to ask what I'm missing, but I don't want to come off as a poor loser, so usually I don't. The most recent example of this for me was my red soulbond card that turned both creatures into Mogg Fanatic (it was named Blood Brother). I think it's my favorite card I've posted this month, but it was one of my least liked designs so far this month vote-wise. Honestly though, I think that was more because there were a lot of really good designs posted that day. Also, I've been playing a lot of various Rakdos sac decks lately in Standard and Pioneer, so I may be a bit partial to a card that fits the archetype right now. :)
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Post by Flatline » 4 years ago

Zemoo wrote:
4 years ago
Maybe I'm counting wrong but didn't I get 2 votes?
Sorry, I'm just now seeing this. You are correct. I have updated your score. Sorry about that.
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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

Congratulations to @Flatline - continuing the tradition of winning DCCs that he himself hosts!
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 Flatline » 4 years ago

void_nothing wrote:
4 years ago
Congratulations to Flatline - continuing the tradition of winning DCCs that he himself hosts!
Thanks. Although, you kinda make it sound like it's some sort of setup. :)
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Post by Rithaniel » 4 years ago

You are a very impressive contender, Flatline. You were a full 20 points ahead of second place at the end.
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Post by Flatline » 4 years ago

Rithaniel wrote:
4 years ago
You are a very impressive contender, Flatline. You were a full 20 points ahead of second place at the end.
Haha! Thanks Rithaniel, that's very kind of you to say. I haven't designed anything for a while now, and I honestly wasn't sure if I would be able to come up with anything going into the month, so I'm both happy and surprised the month went so well for me. It's even got me thinking about playing in the MCC or CCL this month. :)
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Post by folding_music » 4 years ago

good work Flatline!

giggle my card from yesterday didn't end up in the DCC today. maybe I'm on ignore? no worries, it's time I took a break anyway

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Post by void_nothing » 4 years ago

folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
good work Flatline!

giggle my card from yesterday didn't end up in the DCC today. maybe I'm on ignore? no worries, it's time I took a break anyway
It must have just been a misclick - fixed.
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 Rithaniel » 4 years ago

folding_music wrote:
4 years ago
good work Flatline!

giggle my card from yesterday didn't end up in the DCC today. maybe I'm on ignore? no worries, it's time I took a break anyway
Oh no, I thought I had quoted all the posts in the previous thread. I also failed to count your votes, so I have to correct that. My sincerest apologies, I'll make sure to add "cards that were posted" to the list of things I need to double check when I make a new thread.
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Post by Rithaniel » 3 years ago

I wanted to post here for posterity, but congratulations to chochky and scarbo who tied for first place for the month of May, 2020. I've personally never seen a tie until now, but you both played excellently throughout the month.

Also, thanks to everyone who played through my first time hosting the DCC. I enjoyed all the cards people posted and I feel that everything went fairly smoothly (save for a couple of hiccups).
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Post by bravelion83 » 3 years ago

Rithaniel wrote:
3 years ago
I've personally never seen a tie until now
The only time I've ever won the DCC it was a tie, so it's not unprecedented.
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Post by void_nothing » 3 years ago

bravelion83 wrote:
3 years ago
Honorable mention for netn10: that card is monoblack, not Izzet.
What are you basing this on? I find it to be an absurd claim - black (really, {B/R}) gets +N/-N these days sometimes but blue is the king of +N/-N to one's own creatures and red adds the ability to do it to others (Rollick of Abandon, Guise of Fire, Flowstone Slide...) as analogous to burn. And the Izzet flavor makes sense with choosing the scale of the ability. What you're saying is a lot like claiming that a black creature must be monowhite instead because it has lifelink.
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Post by Rithaniel » 3 years ago

Decided to make a quick list of the damages dealt to the different color combinations for Kiln Rain (because I like making lists).

0 Damage —
1 Damage —
2 Damage —
3 Damage —
4 Damage —
5 Damage —
6 Damage —

So, multicolored creatures do get a raw deal on this one. I'd probably change the wording to account for multicolored creatures, but then again, that interaction could be fun.
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Post by Pygyzy » 3 years ago

Really enjoying these card competitions. Y'all are some strong designers.
Just thought I'd ask. Is there any card of mine that stood out to you? Good or otherwise?

I'll do mine:

Let's start with the biggest miss IMO:
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Boggart-Merrow Bait
I wanted this card to be good but what always happens is I get too into technical details I miss the mark on execution. The flavor is great. It's boggarts fishing for merrow. Or is it the other way around? It's both. I wanted it to be really no more than 3 choices but you can buff it with more creatures. It has potential but I nerfed the hell outta it. If I could do it over, I'd do this.

Boggart Bait XX
Merfolk and goblin convoke
Choose one X times. You may choose the same mode —
- Target player puts the top two cards of their library into their graveyard.
- Draw a card, then discard a card.
- Create a 1/1 blue Merfolk creature token for each card you've drawn this turn.
- Deal 1 damage to target creature for each Goblin card in your graveyard.

Couple things- I justify giving red mill because it's such a bad investment to return. Millstone would work just about as well. You'll probably target yourself anyways. So I know MaRo would probably say this is a break, but I think there's more reasons for it than against.
- This card is tricky to balance that's why I ended up with "can't pay for X" and 3 to cast. It could cause blowouts but I think this is more balanced and actually playable. The other version was too constraining.

Runner up - Abstract Construct
It was just supposed to be a minds eye type card that got bigger. The flavor is it's helping you figure out stuff. But I overburdened it again. @chochky. I wasn't aware that infinity minus infinity is still infinity so I changed it to googolplex.
Abstract Construct
Artifact Creature - Buddy 6
This creature gets plus googolplex plus one power and minus googolplex toughness for the first theory counter on a card in exile, and +2/+2 for each idea counter after the first.
Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery spell with a number or number word in it's text, put a idea counter on that spell and exile it. These counters remain between exile and the stack. If there's another card with a idea counter on it in exile, it's owner plays that spell, and adds X to all number or number words in it's text, where X is equal to the number of idea counters on that spell. Move all idea counters on that spell to another card in exile with one, as it resolves.
negative googolplex-1/googolplex+1

Basically I wanted a reverse Infinity Elemental that's not just vanilla. The cards still ugly but at least it works. (I think)
Biggest hits IMO:
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Level Zero Spell - Yeah it's just companion. And I forgot to add haste or something but it's a simple 0 cost spell, puts you up a card, and it's for RDW anyways. Not really a complicated card and I'm glad.
Runner up - Budoka Garden. Kamigawa is one of my favorite sets, and it really sucks that it's so maligned. Coulda done so much. A lot of the legendary lands sucked, so this was my chance to fix it. Probably not other people favorite understandably just mine.
Best overall IMO
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Crossroads bargain - these are just the type of cards I like. I've killed myself more than once with a Spoils of the Vault and suicide black is still one of my favorite archetypes. Not for everyone, but I think I got it about where I like it.
Worst overall IMO
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All the rest. My least favorite is the flip land. Too many hoops, constraints, power level issues, then it'll just end up killing you. Perfect dumpster fire of a card.
Anyone got a card they love or hate? I'm accepting of critique, even if it's harsh. I know I'm more obsessed with "could I?" that I forget "should I?" But I'd like to get better.

Thanks y'all.

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Post by chochky » 3 years ago

Pygyzy wrote:
3 years ago
Really enjoying these card competitions. Y'all are some strong designers.
Just thought I'd ask. Is there any card of mine that stood out to you? Good or otherwise?

Anyone got a card they love or hate? I'm accepting of critique, even if it's harsh. I know I'm more obsessed with "could I?" that I forget "should I?" But I'd like to get better.

Thanks y'all.
Hi Pygzy,

From browsing the past month's DCC, I quite liked your cards Quisling and Wish In One Hand. I also quite like Xenoegg, though I think it would have been a better design if it had been streamlined a bit.

I don't consider myself a great designer in the least, though I've improved a lot since I first started practicing Magic design. Here's a few tips that helped me, and that might be helpful for you:
1) Try and simplify your design as much as possible while retaining key flavor and mechanical intent. The more complex a card is, the harder it will be for people to understand what the card is supposed to do or represent - some people might even give up on reading the card. For example, your Xenoegg card might have been more elegant and even more enjoyable if the token it creates would have been a bit simpler.
2) Always keep the color pie in mind when designing. Hybrid cards can be difficult to design, as they are supposed to represent what both colors can do independent of each other.
3) Narrow your design down to its core idea, and stick to that. Don't try to do ten things on one card. Similarly, don't try to do one concept ten different ways on the same card. This echoes point 1) above. You might think that this limits your design heavily, but it will likely make your card more focused and memorable. For example, say you wanted to design Batman as a card. Batman is a complex character, and it would be hard to capture every facet of him on one card. Instead, it might be better to focus on one aspect of Batman (his gadgets, or his stealth, or his investigative abilities, etc) for your card.
4) Read Mark Rosewater's design articles over on the MtG website. He has many, many useful articles for every level of Magic card design. You could probably design an entire game just through reading all his stuff.

Edit - I forgot point 5) Keep desigining! Designing is fun, and the more you practice the more you'll improve.

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Post by Pygyzy » 3 years ago

Insightful tips thank you. It's encouraging to know that we all wanna make Magic the best game it can so by helping others with their designs we can better understand what that means. Rising tides raise all ships.

I really appreciate some of your designs as well. I riffed on your guildmage. I like your use underutilized creature types. Land Wrath is fun. I like your designs enough I even voted for you when you didn't even enter haha. Oh and thanks for pointing out the flaw in Abstract Concept.

Funny thing about quisling. I was trying to think of something so I went to Wikipedia, hit random, and Quisling came up.

Interesting that you mention Batman because I did design a Batman but it's supposed to be a magic-version if Batman. Dr. Mikhail Keating. I focused more on the Bruce Wayne side of Batman though which, since I'm a DC fan, thats what I like most about the character, his humanity.

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Post by Rithaniel » 3 years ago

Pygyzy wrote:
3 years ago
Rithaniel I wanted to decomplify and I tried but it lost the mechanical identity I wanted. This card is essentially Mairsil, the Pretender + Mirror of the Forebears, which is a house in my mairsil deck so that's what I was going for.
Two different counter types and double XX does needlessly complicate things, but I needed a qualifier or else it's broken, and I wanted it to be flexible. Also I couldnt really think of what to cost it. There's a lot of knobs to turn and rather than go through them all I turned to Chalice of the Void and hoped that would balance it rather than worry about it being overcosted or under.
My advice is to not worry about ensuring a particular mechanical identity. You gotta be willing to allow things to morph from one form to another.

Like, to give you an idea of what I mean, suppose you wanted a creature card that had power based on the number of times some event happened. But you start typing up the abilities and you find that specifying the event you want to measure is too difficult to type up and it's taking too many lines. At that moment, you need to change something, even if it moves away from what your original goal was.
slimytrout wrote:
3 years ago
Rithaniel: Oh, do you also study earth science? I have a friend in my department who's using a pressure chamber to study ringwoodite and wadsleyite in order to figure out just how many ocean-equivalents are stored in the mantle (and also on Mars), but I was surprised to see it pop up here.
Not directly or formally. I'm a mathematician, formally, but I'm coming up with a science fiction world, and, in my pursuit of that, I've been researching planets of all sorts.

It's surprising how difficult some topics are to find, though. Like, these last couple of days I've been trying to find information or speculation on ice giants and there's seemingly nothing there. Some things I've found have actually been papers asserting that we don't know enough about ice giants and should put effort into researching them.
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Post by slimytrout » 3 years ago

Yeah, I think the reason there's so little work on ice giants is because a) as exoplanets, they're damn near impossible to see and b) there have been no space missions that took detailed observations on Uranus and Neptune the way Juno and Cassini did. And there tends to be a big spurt of theoretical inquiry right when we have gotten or are about to get better observations, so even the basic theoretical work isn't being done right now because there's no interesting new or upcoming observations, which is a shame.

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Rithaniel
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Post by Rithaniel » 3 years ago

Pygyzy wrote:
3 years ago
That's pretty interesting rithaniel. Reminds me of an argument. Is 0 a number? I'd argue that it's lack of a number. Pretty sure it's a number tho.
Well, that's a very nebulous topic. Like what do you mean when you say "number?" How are you defining numbers? I'll assume you mean formulations of the natural numbers.

Like, set theorists might have the view that a natural number can be viewed as a quality a finite set of things will have. In a phrase that you might or might not understand: "A number can be viewed as an equivalence class of sets, where the equivalence relation is such that, if there exists a bijection between the sets, they are equivalent." In this formulation, the empty set (a set with nothing in it) defines one of these equivalence classes, and so zero would be a number.

A person might also use the Peano axioms to be the definition of what a natural number is. In which case the first axiom just outright states "0 is a number."

Where you might get some ambiguity is in the world of algebra, where you have structures like semigroups and monoids. I can define the natural numbers to be a monoid (meaning that 0 is included in it) or a non-monoid semigroup (meaning 0 is not included in it). Both are valid definitions, but incur different things.
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"Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is."
― Paul Erdős

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
― Stephen Jay Gould

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Post by Pygyzy » 3 years ago

Exactly. You can't "have" 0 of a thing. But you can still add nothing. It's just a question I'll ask people to see what their response is. A vacuum is technically nothing. But 0 and nothing aren't the same.

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