The MCC Discussion Thread

[Raptorchan]

(2,5/3) Quality - I am not English native so more fluent speakers can correct me, but. Shouldn't the flavor text say "You're not alone, my doves"?

I'm not a native speaker either. As a German, I usually tend to use too many commas in English, if I go by what feels right to me.
Because of this, I copied the flavor text directly from the source:
MARCH OF THE MACHINE | RAVNICA: ONE AND THE SAME

[...]
The only other gorgon calls to the rest of us from across the prison cell.

"You're not alone my doves, I'm here, I'm here."

I yell for her, and my yell is halted by a sob.

I hear two wet punctures, a scream, then a sound that reminds me of meat hitting the wet ground. The other Golgari prisoners call out for her. "Ludmilla!! No!"
[...]

So if it's grammatically incorrect, I'm laying the blame on WotC for not proofreading the stories they publish.

That's a weird situation and I guess I must consult other judges to clarify it. But my internal gut says that mistake is still a mistake, and the fact it was made by WotC themselves still does't make it legit.

You made some critical mistakes here. Tokens aren't cards and paper rules currently don't support conjuring (Arena digital-only mechanic). Tokens don't have mana cost unless they're copying something - but not on their own. Putting tokens on the battlefield under your control after creating is simply redundant and isn't needed to be worded. The entire ability must be rewritten as "Create a 1/1 white and blue Human Wizard creature token named Masked Apprentice with "You may have Masked Apprentice enter the battlefield as a copy of a nonlegendary creature you control." And I guess if you wanted the second ability to blink said tokens - it won't work because tokens cease to exist when they leave the battlefield.

I mean, they aren't used often, so I understand what you mean, but token cards have been used before, though only on unset cards (originally used on Gunk Slug, used in Unfinity on Claire D'Loon, Joy Sculptor). Token cards, unlike tokens, exist between zones, as stated by Claire D'Loon's reminder text (I probably should of added the reminder text, but the card was long enough already). The "Put it onto the battlefield" part is necessary. The mana cost on the token just exists so that one can play it from hand.

That's the problem. Unsets have interactions that aren't supported by actual rules of the game. Back-bordered/non-acorn card shouldn't do that. You better go for regular tokens if you want to make a card that can actually see print in a normal Origins-like set (which, I guess, it the goal).

[Ryder]

Anybody willing to judge January with me? Let's give void a break.

[bravelion83]

@AnotherAlias The default in the MCC is that we are working in regular Magic, with the CR as a reference, excluding anything silver border/acorn unless explicitly requested by the round challenges, and that's not the case here. You can't use silver border/acorn cards and mechanics as precedent. I can't remember whether this is written out in the guidelines document or not, I would have to check and now I don't have the time, but that's always been the intent behind this contest.

@Ryder I am always available to judge and willing to do it, but I'm not even sure we have a host for January yet, and it should be their job to set up a judge signup thread when the time comes. @void_nothing Do we have a host for January yet?

[Ryder]

I am the host Leo

[bravelion83]

I am the host Leo

Oh, I missed that then. If void is aware, I'm fine with that.

[Raptorchan]

@void_nothing we are still waiting for your judging for Mentor round.

[void_nothing]

My sincere apologies. I've had a busy and difficult week and weekend. I'll catch up on MCC judgments in the next day or two, I just have been unable to do so and have had to prioritize the daily contests.

[bravelion83]

My own judgments for December Round 1 are finished. As soon as possible after @void_nothing posts his, Round 2 will be posted.

[Subject16]

Flavor 0/3 - This card name has already been printed in March of the Machine. The rest of the flavor is good but that's just too much of a problem. You'd need to come up with a new card name before being able to send this to print. This is unprintable as is just due to this.

I understand that my submission's name is already in use, that's my mistake and I understand that it's pretty egregious. There are a lot of cards out there so I was bound to make this mistake eventually, yet it still seems to me like this is a very big deduction for a singular mistake. Is there a precedent for this? Why is this a flavor issue and not a quality one? The wording of this makes me feel like this submission may as well be disqualified altogether which feels unfair.

[void_nothing]

Yeah, I'm with Subject16 here. A repeated name is a Quality mistake and maybe a minor Flavor ding - 3 points deducted is just disproportionate. Leo, if you feel strongly about this, it's still ultimately your discretion.

[shullz]

Quality 1/3 - A hyphen instead of an em dash in the type line while some of your opponents got them right, so -0.5 for that. Interestingly, you got that right in all three instances in the rules text, so why not in the type line too?

Probably stupid question:
Is there an official template for this?
I always create my cards in the card creator, which is why it's correct in the rules text.
When I copy it over I just take other people's entries as template. In this case it was only Caspernicus and Komandon, both of whom you also criticized for this.
To be honest I'm not even sure, how to do those dashes on keyboard. Would probably have to google the unicode first.

[shullz]

I just found the MCC Guidelines document.
So I guess this answers my question.
It was just the first time the hyphen was criticized by someone.
I think it would be useful to link the document in the contest threads or include a description of the template.

[bravelion83]

I'll try to focus on the main points.

Subject16's card using a name that's already been used is absolutely a very important point, one that makes the card unprintable as is and thus worthy of a big deduction. I did it in Flavor because it's about the card name, and that's where the card name is judged, together with the other flavor elements of the card. I will admit that in my first draft it wasn't a zero, but a 1/3. Then I brought it to a zero because I put myself in the shoes of a real Wizards editor that has to send the cards to print. If a real Wizards designer or creative put that name for the card in the card file, I would have to go back to them and have it changed because it has already been used, and I asked myself: could I send the file as is to the printers without doing that first? The answer to that is a clear no. So that zero was a way to say "you cannot use this name for this card under any circumstance because it has already been taken". Maybe I was indeed too harsh on that, but as I see it the cards submitted in this contest should be ready to print, and a card that uses an existing name is not. I might change back the Flavor score to 1/3 as it was in my original first draft, but I do feel strongly about this point and I feel like any score above that isn't appropriate for such a mistake. I also think it's more appropriate to deduct points in Flavor for this rather than Quality. Quality is for mistakes within the name, like if the card name had been misspelled as "Into the Fore" for example, with an "o" instead of the "i" in "Fire" (they are adjacent keys in an Italian keyboard, so it would be a rather easy mistake for me to make), but here there are no spelling or grammar mistakes in the name, it's just that the name is unusable, and Flavor is where we care about the card name as a whole, in addition to all the other flavor elements of the card of course.

Cards in the MCC are DQ'ed for a 0 in Main Challenge, not in any other areas. Saying that a card that receives a zero in an area of the rubric other than Main Challenge should be DQ'ed or is worthy of DQ just because of that is not correct.

As for the dashes: I seem to be the only judge to penalize for this, and I've always done that, but that also falls under the things a real Wizards editor would have to look at before sending a card to print. At least on cards in English (Italian too, I don't know about other languages but English is the one that matters here as it's the official Oracle text of a card), those on the type line and after ability words are not hyphens (-) but em dashes (—). Those are different characters. From my (fake) editor's point of view it's just like the designer misspelled a word using a different letter than the correct one, for example if I wrote "lendfall" instead of "landfall". Same thing, only with characters that aren't letters. Again, I, as an editor, would have to change those hyphens to em dashes before sending the file to print. That's actually the reason behind almost all the Quality deductions I make.

As for how to make an em dash on a keyboard, it's very easy if you're on a Windows pc with a numpad (as I am): ALT+0151 that is you keep the ALT key pressed while hitting in sequence the numbers 0 1 5 1 on the numpad. The result is this: —. That's what I've just done. If I'm on mobile (all my devices use Android) then I also usually copy and paste from another card, but I know for sure because I used that for a period that an advanced keyboard like Gboard can do that. I don't know how to do it under OSs other than Windows or in other cases, but I'm sure that if you look for ways to do it on the internet under your specific OS or on a physical keyboard that doesn't have a numpad, you'll find ways to do it.

The guidelines document has always been linked to in my own signature since I have written it at the very beginning of this site. It's a public pdf document on my own Google Drive. I always recommend people to check it at the end of all of my threads in my own months. I agree that it's not the most visible place, especially for people that might have turned off the signature feature. I will put a direct link in all of my own MCC threads from now on. The recommended card formatting for the MCC has always been in that document, again since the very beginning of this site.

I'll give that 1 point back to Subject16 in Flavor, but for the moment I don't feel like any other changes to my judgments are needed. As always, I'm open to any other further questions, doubts, or clarifications of course.

EDIT - I've also changed Round 1's OP to make the guidelines document more visible, including a direct link to it (which is the same link I have in my signature). I will do it this way in all my future MCC threads, and I heartly invite other hosts to do that too from now on. Feel free to copy and paste my usual OP templating if you wish. Giving more visibility to that document can only help.

[Raptorchan]

MCC Round 4 is here.

[Komandon]

I never noticed a document existed for the MCC contest. Thank you @bravelion83 and @shullz. I don't have a computer to use so it's in my old iPhone. Just looked up how to do a dash. For anyone else on a phone it's two hyphens next to each other and it automatically converts to a dash. — vs - or - -
I never gave much thought that in daily challenges for keywords that I seem to have did double hyphens before to make dashes. I'll need to start doing that for the type lines to get use to it.
"Knowing is half the battle" 👍.

[bravelion83]

I never noticed a document existed for the MCC contest. Thank you @bravelion83 and @shullz. I don't have a computer to use so it's in my old iPhone.

You're welcome. Again, the guidelines document has been there since the beginning of this site. Maybe we should advertize it more and make it more visible, so that a new player immediately sees it and doesn't have to look for it themselves, provided they ever hear of it existing in the first place.

Just looked up how to do a dash. For anyone else on a phone it's two hyphens next to each other and it automatically converts to a dash. — vs - or - -

For the record, which OS is this true for? All of them? Only Android? Only iOS? Some specific versions of either? Asking this because I'm on Android (my tablet an old version, my old phone a different old version, and my new phone a much newer version) and I've never done it that way personally, while you mention yours is an iPhone.

I never gave much thought that in daily challenges for keywords that I seem to have did double hyphens before to make dashes. I'll need to start doing that for the type lines to get use to it.
"Knowing is half the battle" 👍.

It is indeed.

[OneAndOnly]

As a (more or less) outsider to this process, I note the MCC guidelines bravelion83 presents are worded very weakly in terms of the "dash" requirement ("a normal dash is acceptable") and certainly don't suggest penalization.

While I understand the MCC Guidelines were created prior to MTGNexus' existence, and might reflect coding used on other boards, I'd suggest trying to get tge MCC formatting guidelines and the MTGNexus guidelines more in concordance. I suspect more users, especially newer ones, follow the latter; they're more visible.

[Komandon]

@bravelion83 my IS is the iPhone iOS 16.7.2
I looked up and depending on type of device and if it has an external keyboard differs.

This looks like the most up to date link. https://www.maketecheasier dot com/best-ways-type-em-dash-on-any-platform/ (I put the Dot because over a decade ago I was a mod and on forums there was some issue with hyperlinks. So just in case.) It has listing for windows, apple, chrome, Linux, iPhone/iPad, and android. It looks like I can do a hold now on the hyphen as well to get more options. I need to explore that. Seems a few other buttons have that option.

(Are outside hyperlinks ok?)

[Ryder]

Sorry for your loss Leo, take care.

Agreed with @OneAndOnly, we should attach the guidelines to the MCC opening posts.

@netn10 October finals deadline is today, don't be late

[bravelion83]

As I've just written in the DCC discussion thread, as soon as I see @void_nothing's judgments for December Round 1, the contest will move on and I'll post Round 2. Thanks again to all of you. It feels good to be back, or at least as good as it can be in a situation like mine now.

[void_nothing]

Judgments in at last. My sincere apologies for the delay - this month has kind of gotten away from me in a lot of ways.

[bravelion83]

this month has kind of gotten away from me in a lot of ways.

Tell it to me... working on Round 2 right now. Coming soon.

EDIT - It's up. I haven't written the clarifications yet, I'll do that tomorrow, now I'm crushing and I need to go to bed, but I wanted to get it out as soon as possible. I have also moved up the link to the guidelines document and I've also included it as an attachment, I had to recompress it because of the file size limit for attachments but I did it. Enjoy. If you've followed my own recent posts in the last days you should know what that shocking discovery was...

[Raptorchan]

Sorry for being late, my MCC judgements are done.

[Raptorchan]

Congratulations to @Ryder, our MCC November champion!

[Ryder]

Thank you, that was close @slimytrout!
Now that my comeback is complete, brace yourselves for the upcoming January MCC!

@void_nothing yeah I dropped the ball missing Ninjas, I had come up with it, but that had been after the design deadline. Also good catch in the quality part.