November MCC Judge Signup

[slimytrout]

November MCC

Judge signup thread

If you want to sign up as a judge for the November MCC, just reply to this thread. If you've already judged before in the MCC, that's enough. If you've never judged before, there is an extra step required: please try to judge the sample card you can find below with the MCC rubric and post your sample judgment here. I will reply to you as soon as possible with my own thoughts about it and if you are in the right ballpark (even if it requires a little prompting on my part), you will be officially sanctioned as an MCC judge.

Since I'm hosting, I'm also going to be a judge, and bravelion has already volunteered in the discussion thread. We will need at least one more, potentially two based on participation -- only time will tell. Please check out the MCC Guidelines and FAQ if you have the desire and the time. Link here.


SAMPLE CARD
Assume all challenges (Main Challenge and both Subchallenges) are met.

Mind-Razor Wall 2B
Creature — Wall (R)
Whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, it's controller discards a card.
T, 1B: Each player with no cards in hand loses 3 life.
Grixis doesn't rely merely on physical barriers for protection.
0/4

MCC Rubric

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Design
(X/3) Appeal - Do the different player psychographics (Timmy/Johhny/Spike) have a use for the card?
(X/3) Elegance - Is the card easily understandable at a glance? Do all the flavor and mechanics combined as a whole make sense?

Development
(X/3) Viability - How well does the card fit into the color wheel? Does it break or bend the rules of the game? Is it the appropriate rarity?
(X/3) Balance - Does the card have a power level appropriate for contemporary constructed/limited environments without breaking them? Does it play well in casual and multiplayer formats? Does it create or fit into a deck/archetype? Does it create an oppressive environment?

Creativity
(X/3) Uniqueness - Has a card like this ever been printed before? Does it use new mechanics, ideas, or design space? Does it combine old ideas in a new way? Overall, does it feel "fresh"?
(X/3) Flavor - Does the name seem realistic for a card? Does the flavor text sound professional? Do all the flavor elements synch together to please Vorthos players?

Polish
(X/3) Quality - Points deducted for incorrect spelling, grammar, and templating.
(X/2) Main Challenge (*) - Was the main challenge satisfied? Was it approached in a unique or interesting way? Does the card fit the intent of the challenge?
(X/2) Subchallenges - One point awarded per satisfied subchallenge condition.

Total: X/25
*An entry with 0 points here is subject to disqualification.

Judge signups will stay open until the design deadline for Round 1 or until we get enough judges, whichever comes first. The judge signups will be going on in parallel with Round 1. I'll be posting Round 1 tomorrow night.

[bravelion83]

Guess who's back? Back again? Leo is back! He'll judge again! Guess who's back...
(Yes, I also like Eminem, not only Linkin Park... And by the way, I almost missed this thread. Luckily I've seen it on time!)

and bravelion has already volunteered in the discussion thread.

I've just seen this after I had already made this post. I thought you had just copy/pasted my own text that I usually put in every judge singup signup (*) thread in my months, I hadn't realized there were slight adjustments... Oh well, let's just say we've made it official by me having posted here too.

(*) I've edited the unintentional typo away but I'm leaving it there in stroked text because it's just hilarious! It made me laugh as soon as I saw it, seeing that I've posted a quote from a song... (For those that might not have realized, you're supposed to sing my line over the very beginning of "Without me" by Eminem. Leo is back here, not Shady!)

[Dragonlover]

Sod it, I'll bite.

Mind-Razor Wall 2b
Creature — Wall (R)
Whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, it's controller discards a card.
, : Each player with no cards in hand loses 3 life.
Grixis doesn't rely merely on physical barriers for protection.
0/4

Design
(2/3) Appeal - Do the different player psychographics (Timmy/Johnny/Spike) have a use for the card?

Timmy's a bit underwhelmed, but Johnny is thinking of ways to force attacks so the hand gets stripped quicker, and indeed get advantage from the discards. Similarly, Spike is thinking about the long game and figures this can be used to close out once control has been established.

(2.5/3) Elegance - Is the card easily understandable at a glance? Do all the flavor and mechanics combined as a whole make sense?

No real problems here, although I'm going to knock off half a point for the tap ability affecting the controller since the whole flavour of the card is that it's protecting you.

Development
(3/3) Viability - How well does the card fit into the color wheel? Does it break or bend the rules of the game? Is it the appropriate rarity?

Again no problems here, forcing discard is a solidly black part of the pie and there's nothing here that really messes with the rules. The rarity is appropriate, as multiple of these in a Limited event would be bone grindingly horrible to play against.

(2.5/3) Balance - Does the card have a power level appropriate for contemporary constructed/limited environments without breaking them? Does it play well in casual and multiplayer formats? Does it create or fit into a deck/archetype? Does it create an oppressive environment?

Power level is fine as (barring the go-wide aggro matchup) it's going to take a few turns before you start being able to activate it. It could get quite oppressive in multiples though as barring straight up creature destruction things with 4 toughness can be a pain to shift. Plays fine in multiplayer, probably slots straight into any control decks able to run black without too many issues.

Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness - Has a card like this ever been printed before? Does it use new mechanics, ideas, or design space? Does it combine old ideas in a new way? Overall, does it feel "fresh"?

Black has a few cards that trigger when you're attacked, but they all cause lifeloss so this is a twist on an existing idea. Similarly, damaging opponents for having no/few cards in hand has been done before but not repeatably. It's not a totally original card, butthere's nothing really like it as Magic stands today.

(2.5/3) Flavor - Does the name seem realistic for a card? Does the flavor text sound professional? Do all the flavor elements synch together to please Vorthos players?

All fine, but I'm gonna ding half a point again for the fact it hits you as well if you've got no cards in hand.

Polish
(0/3) Quality - Points deducted for incorrect spelling, grammar, and templating.

Should be a hyphen in the typeline not an em-dash, should be "its controller" not "it's controller" and finally the cost of the ability is the wrong way round, should be mana then the tap symbol. Also it's "no cards in their hand", not just "no cards in hand".

(2/2) Main Challenge (*) - Was the main challenge satisfied? Was it approached in a unique or interesting way? Does the card fit the intent of the challenge?
(2/2) Subchallenges - One point awarded per satisfied subchallenge condition.

Total: 18.5/25

[slimytrout]

This looks great! You're in! I'm happy to judge your submission outside of competition if you'd like.

The only comment I had was that your quality section was both a little too harsh and not entirely correct, and since this is the only section that is almost entirely "objective" I wanted to go through each quality mistake you noted to make sure we were on the same page:

1. In general, I think most judges don't worry too much about hyphen length unless there's a strong reason too, as it's just kind of a pain to tell which hyphen is which length and which type should go where. Moreover, if you go to Gatherer you'll see that they do in fact use em-dashes in the type line: here's a copy-paste from there (—) and here's a copy-paste from the test submission (—). I certainly don't want to insist that you don't take off points for hyphens, but if you are going to you should make sure that you're doing so correctly, and even if you do take off points it should only be -0.5.

2. Should be "Its controller" rather than "it's controller." Yes, definitely a mistake (and a fairly common one). -0.5

3. Cost of the ability flipped. Yep! I think either -1 or -0.5 here would be reasonable.

4. I'm virtually certain that "no cards in hand" is actually the correct text here. The way I know that is by doing an advanced search on Gatherer (or scryfall) for cards with that text, and for "no cards in hand" I find 42 cards with that text, while for "no cards in their hand" I find zero. But, suppose the test card did have the wrong text in this manner, it should still only be -0.5, since it's a minor mistake that didn't have any effect on how the card works.

So I think that the "correct" quality score would be 1.5/3, but even if 1. and 4. had been wrong, I still think that you should have arrived at 0.5/3. This is the one section where there is (usually) some kind of inherent truth that is accessible, so I would advise you to be careful about coming to snap judgements about things. On especially tricky cards, more than half of the time it takes me to do the full judgement might be spent looking for appropriate comparisons in Gatherer.

I went on longer than I should have, and again, the rest of the judgement looks very good, so I don't want it to seem like I'm being overly critical -- I'm mostly doing this to avoid controversy in the future (since there's been some in the past over this very topic).

[slimytrout]

This means we have three judges, which will probably be sufficient unless there's a big rush of interest. Would accept one more person as a backup judge just in case, but likely won't be needed.

[Dragonlover]

[mention]slimytrout[/mention] all entirely reasonable points and trust me, I'd rather people point things out in exhaustive detail than the other way round. I'll own the screwup on the 'no cards in hand' judgement quite happily, by that point I'd Scryfalled multiple fragments of text and it all just kinda blurred together. Feel free to judge mine OOC.

Dragonlover

[bravelion83]

First, remember that Scryfall can be as good as you want but it is still an unofficial database. The official one is still Gatherer. You should use Gatherer as a reference of what Wizards does, not Scryfall.

Ok, that said, let me do a thing. As I've always felt that Quality is my strongest area as a judge without a doubt (and Uniqueness my weakest one by far, also without a doubt), and as one of the creators of the current rubric, I'll tell you how I would have judged Quality on this sample card.

slimytrout's Quality

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Mind-Razor Wall 2B
Creature — Wall (R)
Whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, it's controller discards a card.
T, 1B: Each player with no cards in hand loses 3 life.
Grixis doesn't rely merely on physical barriers for protection.
0/4

Quality (0.5/3) - Oh, look! The eternal struggle of the verb "it's" versus the possessive adjective/pronoun "its" is back! Here you chose the wrong one. This is a very serious grammar mistake in the English language that completely changes the meaning of the sentence at best, or just erases it, making the sentence make as much sense as "assembling a Contraption" did before Unstable. Seeing how serious and easy to avoid this mistake is, -1. (As I will always do for this. Don't ask me to deduct only half a point for such an egregious mistake.) Second, it's a well-known fact that the tap symbol always comes after the mana component of an activation cost. In fact, this is so well-known that it's also a full -1. Third, and lastly, the activated ability should say "Each player that has no card in hand..." (see Asylum Visitor and Howltooth Hollow for example, -0.5).

As for the hyphen, I see both the ones you copy-pasted as the same one, the correct one (the "em dash"). For reference, an in-depth explanation follows.

All that you wanted to know about dashes and Magic cards, and probably more

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Here are the three types of dashes and their code in Windows (I'm still using 7 but I don't think they've changed them in 10):

Hyphen (technically WRONG for the type line and flavor text attribution on Magic cards): -
It's the one that you make with the "minus sign" key of your keyboard, either with the key in the main section of the keyboard, or with the key in the numeric pad (if you have it in the first place).

En dash (technically WRONG for the type line and flavor text attribution on Magic cards): –
You can make it in Windows in two ways as far as I know:
ALT+0150 if you have a numeric pad (the way I've made it here, works everywhere)
CTRL+- (the minus sign of the numeric pad, works only in Word as far as I know)
Copy it from the character map (doesn't require the numeric pad)

Em dash (the one technically RIGHT for the type line and flavor text attribution on Magic cards, I'm sure because I've confronted with the one used in Gatherer): —
You can make it in Windows in several ways:
ALT+0151 if you have a numeric pad (the way I've made it here, works everywhere)
Copy it from the character map (doesn't require the numeric pad)

Shape confrontation:
- hyphen (minus sign)
– en dash (ALT+0150)
— em dash (ALT+0151, the right one for type line and flavor text attribution)

Thank you because I had always used the CTRL+- combination in Word thinking it made the correct dash while instead while doing this research I've discovered it actually makes the wrong one. Ok, I'll just use the ALT+numeric pad combinations from now on.

As a judge, I usually don't deduct any points for using the wrong dash unless it matters for the round challenges, like for example in my Round 3 from October, where Subchallenge 2 required a flavor text attribution. In that case, I have penalized people for using the wrong one.

[slimytrout]

Fair enough on the deduction for "its" vs. "it's" -- I tend to reserve -1 for errors that substantially affect the meaning of the card (to the point that it's no longer clear exactly what the card would mean), but everyone can decide for themselves how big of a deal they think it is.

However, I don't actually think that we have enough information to definitively say that it should be "each player that has no card in hand." the two cards that you quoted don't use that exact text, and in fact no card has ever used the exact text "each player that has"; on the other hand, there have been two cards to use the text "each player with": Menacing Ogre and Triskaidekaphobia. Obviously those are doing different things from the test card, but I do think that it's suggestive that Triskaidekaphobia didn't use the text "each player that has exactly 13 life," so I'd say the evidence isn't conclusive enough to justify a deduction. In case you couldn't tell, that was the only (potential) error that I didn't deliberately insert, so I don't actually know what the true answer is.

[bravelion83]

In the meantime, I was writing my own reply to your points. You anticipated me, but I'll post it anyway. This was meant to be added as an edit to my previous post, so when I say "previous spoiler" or "spoiler above" I refer to those from my previous post.

1. In general, I think most judges don't worry too much about hyphen length unless there's a strong reason too ... even if you do take off points it should only be -0.5.

As I've said in the previous spoiler, I totally agree with this point, and I also agree with the max -0.5 deduction.

2. Should be "Its controller" rather than "it's controller." Yes, definitely a mistake (and a fairly common one). -0.5

A TOO common one, and TOO easy to avoid to ignore, and completely changes or even removes the meaning of the sentence. As I've written in my judgment spoiler above, both the grammar seriousness of this mistakes and how easy it is to avoid (it's just one key you have to hit or not hit) require AT LEAST a full -1. I totally disagree with the -0.5 here. That's just too little for this.

3. Cost of the ability flipped. Yep! I think either -1 or -0.5 here would be reasonable.

No way this could be a -0.5. This also has to be at least a -1, here not because of the seriousness, but because of how well-known this templating rule is.

4. I'm virtually certain that "no cards in hand" is actually the correct text here. The way I know that is by doing an advanced search on Gatherer (or scryfall) for cards with that text, and for "no cards in hand" I find 42 cards with that text, while for "no cards in their hand" I find zero. But, suppose the test card did have the wrong text in this manner, it should still only be -0.5, since it's a minor mistake that didn't have any effect on how the card works.

Too bad you didn't search Gatherer for "with no cards in hand". I did, and that returns zero results. All 42 cards you mention use the verb to have right before it. Try to search "with no cards in hand", "has no cards in hand", and "have no cards in hand". That's how I've discovered the examples I've mentioned in my Quality judgment above.

So I think that the "correct" quality score would be 1.5/3

I politely but completely disagree.

I still think that you should have arrived at 0.5/3.

You should totally arrive at 0.5/3. And as you say yourself, that's the most objective part of the rubric.

On especially tricky cards, more than half of the time it takes me to do the full judgement might be spent looking for appropriate comparisons in Gatherer.

It might not be half of the time to me, as I write notoriously long judgments that also take quite some time to write, but I can also confirm that you will (and should totally) spend a lot of time on Gatherer while judging.

I'm mostly doing this to avoid controversy in the future (since there's been some in the past over this very topic).

And you did a good thing. I will also be around, and again, I'm one of the people who wrote this rubric, I'm naturally a very detail-oriented person, I know the CR and templating rules very well, and I think my judging experience is well-known by now (if not just take a look at my signature). I will definitely be there too should any controversy arise.

---

And now for your last post (this is what I originally meant this post to be):

However, I don't actually think that we have enough information to definitively say that it should be "each player that has no card in hand."

I totally do instead. Here's where we disagree.

"each player with": Menacing Ogre and Triskaidekaphobia.

Correct.

Obviously those are doing different things from the test card,

Here's my point. You've just answered yourself.

so I don't actually know what the true answer is.

I'm very confident in mine, as much as I've rarely been for an MCC judgment.

---

Please, don't misunderstand my tone. If I might sound a little more "aggressive" than usual, I apologize, it's not my intention at all. It's just that I'm having a pretty bad day for other personal reasons that I obviously won't mention here. I don't want to impose my point of view, and my judging experience doesn't make me in any way superior to any other person around here, obviously including you, Dragonlover, any other MCCNexus users, and every other single person on the planet.
As a note, my own rule for Quality point deductions is: default is -0.5, do -1 instead in the following three cases: where the mistake is too serious (like "it's" vs. "its"), where the mistake is functional and causes the card not to work in the rules, or where the correct templating is just too well-known (like the mana component coming before the tap symbol). I will never go beyond -1, at least under ordinary circumstances.

[slimytrout]

I feel odd saying this to the person who more or less wrote the rules, but here's the only relevant text in the guidelines: "Point deductions in this area should range from ‐0.5 to ‐1 for each mistake depending on its severity." I definitely concede that I shouldn't be telling Dragonlover how much to take off for "it's" vs. "its," but I also think that the same is true in reverse. It's pretty clear to me that there are people on this forum who aren't all that fluent in English but who are nevertheless interested in and talented at designing magic cards, and I imagine that it would be discouraging for those people to be often receiving a near-zero score in Quality. For this reason, I try to be as gentle as I can be in my Quality deductions when it comes to minor mistakes of English (not things that actually change the function of the card or make its meaning unclear). Again, I'm not trying to say that other judges shouldn't choose between -0.5 and -1 as they see fit -- that's (mostly) up to them -- but rather trying to explain why I take the position that I do. If I were judging this card, I would give it a 1.5/3: -0.5 for the it's, -1 for the reversed symbols, and no deduction for the "with no cards in hand" as I explained above.

[bravelion83]

The guidelines are intentionally very open, to accomodate everybody's way of judging. I'm sorry, I'm just making this a way bigger deal than it is. Again, I'm having a very bad day for my own reasons. I feel like I have said everything I had to say on my part, and I think it might be best for me to just shut up now. I probably shouldn't post when I'm not in the right mood for it. Please mind the last part of my previous post:

Please, don't misunderstand my tone. If I might sound a little more "aggressive" than usual, I apologize, it's not my intention at all. It's just that I'm having a pretty bad day for other personal reasons that I obviously won't mention here. I don't want to impose my point of view, and my judging experience doesn't make me in any way superior to any other person around here, obviously including you, Dragonlover, any other MCCNexus users, and every other single person on the planet.

This is the most important thing I've written in all these posts. Now I'm wishing I hadn't posted at all. I am just having a bad day. It happens to everybody from time to time. I apologize again to you, Dragonlover, and everybody else.

[slimytrout]

Oh, sorry, I totally didn't see that section! And please, no apologies necessary -- I'm very sorry that you're having a rough day! I was in no way offended, and I very much doubt that Dragonlover is because he seems to have left the two of us to argue in peace . One of the main reasons that I've stuck around on this corner of the internet (besides the fact that I enjoy designing cards, of course) is the fact that, even if people disagree, and even if they very occasionally do so in ways that tick each other off, everyone is always able to let things go and understand that the various parties don't mean any harm by it. I haven't encountered any malicious intent from anyone on this forum, which makes it all the easier to know that a few strongly worded posts (especially from a local luminary like yourself) are coming from a place of friendly disagreement rather than anger.