December MCC, Round 4: Summer Incarnate

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December MCC, Round 4 - Summer Incarnate

Welcome to the November MCC! It's Winter/Summer Month here at the MCC. We will be covering the spirit of the season in both hemispheres!

Main Challenge: Design a legendary Elemental creature card with "Maro-Sorcerer" in its name
Subchallenge 1: Your card has either variable power and toughness or base power and toughness 0/0
Subchallenge 2: Your card has converted mana cost 6 or greater

DEADLINES

Design deadline: Tuesday, January 12th 23:59 EDT

Judging deadline: Friday, January 15th 23:59 EDT

Clarifications

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None yet!

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.

Judges:
void_nothing
slimytrout

Players:
@Lorn Asbord Schutta
@Henlock

[void_nothing]

Bump!

[void_nothing]

Checking in with @Lorn Asbord Schutta and @Henlock

[Lorn Asbord Schutta]

Modruni, Maro-Sorcerer
Legendary Creature - Elemental Avatar (M)
When you cast this spell, create a number of 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens equal to the total number of cards in all players' hands.
Modruni, Maro-Sorcerer's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creatures you control.
Wisdom grows through life and through his wisdom life grows.
*/*

[Henlock]

holder

[void_nothing]

@Henlock Checking in!

[Henlock]

Sorry. for thw delay

Imazo, Maro Sorcerer g
Legendary Creature - Elemental Wizard (r)
Trample
Imazo, Maro Sorcerer gets +1/+1 for each card in excess of 7 in your hand.
Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner)
----------------------------
Is there a limit on how vast a flower can bloom?
1/1

[void_nothing]

That will close it. @slimytrout let's judge.

[void_nothing]

Just bumping this to remind slimy and myself.

[slimytrout]

Lorn Asbord Schutta

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Modruni, Maro-Sorcerer
Legendary Creature - Elemental Avatar (M)
When you cast this spell, create a number of 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens equal to the total number of cards in all players' hands.
Modruni, Maro-Sorcerer's power and toughness are each equal to the number of creatures you control.
Wisdom grows through life and through his wisdom life grows.
*/*

Design
(2/3) Appeal — Timmy likes the potential for an enormous beater that also brings a bunch of guys with him. Spike likes the decisions of whether to keep cards in hand to make more tokens but doesn't like that it costs 8 mana. Johnny likes the numerous interlocking variables (cards in hand, creatures you control, p/t) but the whole package is a little straightforward for them.
(2.5/3) Elegance — It's definitely more easily readable without the flavor text, but still isn't fair to call it microtext.

Development
(3/3) Viability — Green makes a lot of tokens and Maros traditionally care about cards in hand so that's fine. The "warlord" ability is secondary in green, so also not a problem. Mythic is probably right, although I don't think I would've dinged you for rare either.
(2.5/3) Balance — Eight mana is way too much for any single-player constructed formats, and even in limited, by the time you cast it both players will have virtually empty hands (you can't even sandbag lands because you need them to cast the spell) so you're probably paying eight mana for a Crusader of Osric. Obviously this is intended for EDH, where you have more ramp and more players with more cards in hand, but I'm still going to ding you a bit for it being useless in basically all other formats.

Creativity
(2/3) Uniqueness — All the ideas have existed before, but they're combined in new ways (particularly the cast trigger to get value even through a counterspell).
(3/3) Flavor — Sure, no problems here. Nothing extraordinary, but nothing wrong either.

Polish
(3/3) Quality — All good.
(2/2) Main Challenge — Yep.
(2/2) Subchallenges — Yep yep.

Total: 22/25

Henlock

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Imazo, Maro Sorcerer g
Legendary Creature - Elemental Wizard (r)
Trample
Imazo, Maro Sorcerer gets +1/+1 for each card in excess of 7 in your hand.
Partner (You can have two commanders if both have partner)
----------------------------
Is there a limit on how vast a flower can bloom?
1/1

Design
(1.5/3) Appeal — Johnny is the most interested, since this is definitely daring you to set up crazy draw combos. Timmy likes having lots of cards in hand and having enormous creatures, but consistently >7 is a bit of a tough ask. Spike is not interested in a card that requires you not to cast spells in order to be more than a 1/1.
(3/3) Elegance — Definitely asks a provocative question, but it's not confusing.

Development
(3/3) Viability — Sure, this works as green and rare.
(1.5/3) Balance — I'm no EDH expert, which is awkward since that's the only format this is for, but I don't think this would be very good at all. With no abilities other than growing itself, it could only really be useful for commander damage, and if you have more than twenty cards in hand you should already be able to win the game. But if I'm very wrong about this, people should chime in to correct me.

Creativity
(2.5/3) Uniqueness — +1/+1 for each card in hand has been done many times before, but "in excess of 7" is quite new.
(2.5/3) Flavor — The flavor text question strikes me as a little absurd… Maybe if it was a quote I wouldn't find it quite as silly.

Polish
(2/3) Quality — Maro-Sorcerer should have a dash in it (-0.5), and dashes are unnecessary between rules and flavor text (-0.5)
(2/2) Main Challenge — Not going to penalize for the fact that *technically* you don't have "Maro-Sorcerer" because you forgot the dash in the name, because that would be extremely pedantic and we're never pedantic here at the MCC
(0/2) Subchallenges — 0<1<6.

Total: 18/25

Results

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Lorn Asbord Schutta: 22
Henlock: 18

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Lorn Asbord Schutta

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Design
(2/3) Appeal - Txmmy is all over this. Jxnny has ways to abuse this but the end result is a bit straightforward. Spike likes this only for Commander. So, one full point and two half points.
(2.5/3) Elegance - Multiple variables but that's about it that detracts from the elegance.

Development
(3/3) Viability - Super green! Mythic is fine especially if Modruni would wind up being a major storyline character.
(3/3) Balance - Ultimately just a lot of vanilla/virtual-vanilla bodies, one of which is (ideally) very large. You could have slapped on trample and I think it would have helped this card. Not gonna make Standard waves; mostly this is for EDH.

Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness - Pretty bog-standard Maro-Sorcerer design, which is, well, what the challenge was kinda for. Still, a cast trigger and total of all players' hands are newish wrinkles even if one was necessary for proper functioning for the card (no killing him with a Shock before an ETB trigger resolves).
(3/3) Flavor - Works for me.

Polish
(3/3) Quality - Seems good.
(2/2) Main Challenge (*) - Done.
(2/2) Subchallenges - And done.

Total: 22/25

Henlock

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Design
(1/3) Appeal - Probably a pure Jxnny card even at the EDH table (which is clearly what this card is meant for): Not big enough for Txmmy and too janky for Spike.
(3/3) Elegance - Hardly inelegant.

Development
(3/3) Viability - All green abilities, and partner legends should arguably be at least rare unless it's a Commander Legends, draft sort of situation.
(2.5/3) Balance - Arguably pretty underwhelming: Yes this is just one mana, but having to have eight cards in hand just to get any P/T bonus at all does not a viable strategy make, even with a partner. I guess you could play a SUPER reactive control deck that doesn't cast anything except disruption, drops a Reliquary Tower or similar, and uses Imazo as the finisher/single big threat? Not sure which partner would be best for that: it would be an interesting challenge but I dunno if it would ever be a good deck.

Creativity
(1.5/3) Uniqueness - Basically a pure Maro variant; the "in excess" thing and the idea of being a one-mana partner that's good for combat only are new thoughts though.
(2.5/3) Flavor - Maros, being forces of nature, don't usually get class types. If they did I'd think Shaman or Druid would be the one to use before Wizard. I do like the flavor text though.

Polish
(2.5/3) Quality - "Maro-Sorcerer" has a hyphen. The "in excess" wording isn't... incorrect exactly but I'm not sure it'd be the one that would be used. It's up in the air so I'm not going to ding for it.
(2/2) Main Challenge (*) - Done.
(0/2) Subchallenges - Neither.

Total: 18/25

[void_nothing]

Lorn Asbord Schutta: 22+22=44
Henlock: 18+18=36

Congrats to @Lorn Asbord Schutta!