March MCC Round 1
Assassination
As is tradition by now, this month we will celebrate the latest set, in this case Murders at Karlov Manor, by exploring its mechanics and themes, as usual in this kind of MCC months.
This month I will also tell a murder mystery story set on Ravnica, though completely independent from the one going on in MKM, and also completely independent from the MCC competition and challenges. It's just an added extra thing for flavor, that you all can try to solve before the final round, when I will reveal the culprit. If that sounds fun to you, you're welcome to try to crack the case before the in-story detective, which you will meet soon enough. If it doesn't, you can just skip it and only care about the challenges and you will still have the normal MCC experience. Not in this paragraph, but starting from the very first words of the first episode in the spoiler below ("On Ravnica, …"), literally everything you read in these story episodes at the beginning of each round this month could be a clue or a red herring. I will reveal it all in the final round. And now, with that said, let the murder mystery story begin!
One pierced heart, two mindful horns - Episode 1/4 (with fixed typos, hopefully all of them)
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One pierced heart, two mindful horns
EPISODE 1
Entering the crime scene
On Ravnica, a long time has passed since the original Guildpact was first written by the paruns and then broken by Agrus Kos, since the Simic were reborn from the Zonots, since the Implicit Maze was run and Jace Beleren became the Living Guildpact, since several guildleaders were killed, or killed again in the case of the Obzedat, since Nicol Bolas invaded the plane with his army of Eternals, including God-Eternals who all found their demise during the War of the Spark, since Niv-Mizzet became the new Living Guildpact on that same day, and even since the recent Phyrexian invasion of the Multiverse. All of that was gone now, and the ones that matter are the ones who are alive today. Today, not yesterday, last week, or even last month. Those are not the ones that count. The ones being made of living flesh and bones, not those who are only bones if they're lucky, or the ones who are made of so many beings fused together that you can't even be sure who or what they are. Normal Ravnican people building a new normality for the plane of Ravnica and for themselves, that's what really matters now.
In a forgotten and unknown neighborhood of the city-plane, far away from the buzz of the Tenth District, a Selesnya loxodon hierarch was holding a speech in a public plaza in front of a crowd of people. Many of them wore no guild colors, while others did. The former were actually the majority, though the number of the latter was also significant enough. Not all the guilds were represented though. The hierarch himself was intentionally pointing out the ones who were present in front of him, accusing all of them of something morally wrong.
"You!", he said pointing his fingers against a human young woman dressed in red and black. "You and your patron do nothing but seeding chaos into our city! With the excuse of keeping him pleased, you also keep the killing going on in your theaters, and you even call it a 'show'! You're using death for the enjoyment of others, but what will happen when you will be the one called to be the volunteer for one of your very well known 'tricks' on stage, as you like to call them? Will you enjoy your own death?"
"And you!" He pointed at a young male elf dressed in black and green. "You too exploit death! You say it's a natural part of life, while at the same time you deal in poisons and dubious agriculture. What's the fertilizer for your plants? Dead bodies? Obviously yes, and obviously ones you've unnaturally killed yourself, not certainly ones who died from actual natural causes. You're even worse than the Rakdos, at least they do it under the light of day…"
"Our shows are always at night!", the woman the hierarch was addressing before shouted. The loxodon ignored her. "...while you do that in the dark of the undercity, both literally and figuratively. Learn not to hide the fact that you're also using death for your own purposes. Life is something you're not supposed to play with. But you're not alone in that. Guess who also plays with life?"
"You!" This time he pointed his finger towards a merfolk woman dressed in green and blue. "You and your abominations are an insult to the nature that both you and we should defend!"
"Just for your information, those that you call 'abominations' are actually called 'krasis', and they are scientific experiments."
"They shouldn't exist at all! And if they do, it's exactly because you have fun playing with life in an unnatural way. Ravnica would be better if you just stopped meshing different species together! Or would you like to be fused with, say, a five-armed spider?"
"Spiders have eight of those, and they are legs, not arms."
"Making it even more unnatural, good! So would you personally like to be fused with an unnatural kind of spider? Because that's exactly how you treat nature. Or mistreat, as I should have actually said. As a tool to use in your horrifying so-called 'biological experiments', that's how you use it!"
"And that's their name because that's exactly what they are, biological experiments for the improvement of nature!"
But the Selesnya hierarch was already too focused on his next targets to reply. He was using both his fingers to point out people in the crowd. His right index finger was indicating a male goblin dressed in red and blue, while his left index finger an old human lady wearing a luxury black fur over white shirts and pants. The goblin instantly became visibly anxious, and had trouble standing still among the crowd. The lady hadn't moved a single facial muscle yet.
"Nature is under no debt and no obligation to adhere to your theories, despite how strongly both of you would like that not to be the case, but unfortunately I have to tell you that's exactly the case." The goblin was already running away, horrified and scared at the same time. The lady still had to move a single facial muscle, like if she just didn't care about what that boring loxodon had to say, and didn't even want to care. "I will just have the Syndicate bankrupt him. Nature might not have debts, but he certainly will, and very soon." Such must have been her thoughts, but she didn't say a single word aloud. It's not that she wouldn't dare to say it, rather that she just didn't care enough to say it.
The loxodon reprised. "And all of you aren't even the worst. I don't see any representatives of the Gruul clans here now, but let me tell you: they are the worst! Their ancient gods! Not a single god of nature or growth, mind you, they are all gods of destruction! The one they call Ilharg! Nothing more than a giant, angry and hungry boar. A boar that's supposed to bring the end of times? Prophesied to bring some kind of End-Raze? A boar is a boar, with its instincts, that's for sure, but one that will supposedly come one day out of nowhere to destroy nature instead of protecting it? Provided that the Gruul even know what protecting something means… A boar that sets grass on fire instead of just eating it as it's supposed to do? I'd really wanna see that! I hope that prophecy actually comes true someday, but I have big doubts about that…" He started laughing. "...which if you prefer me to say it in another way, just means I don't believe it, not even a single word of it! Well, if I wanna keep having some good laughs about it, I hope that at least in that moment I'm still ali—"
A moment. A loxodon body on the ground. An arrow, shot with extreme precision directly at his heart. A second for everybody to turn their heads. A figure running away with a bow in their hand and vials of violet poison coming out of their cloak's pockets. Eyes of a crowd watching… him? Her? Them? Who knows… that figure from the back. A blue and black hooded cloak disguising whoever that figure was. No one knowing who they (maybe?) were. No one chasing after them. A collective shock, and a consequently apparently successful runaway. No one who could recognize that figure anyway. Who could be under their blue and black disguise?
Not a single person from the crowd the Selesnya hierarch was talking to had dared to walk away. All eyes were pointing at the dead loxodon body with an arrow sticking out of his heart. One of the people in the crowd was a young human boy, probably about twenty or so years old judging by his look, with no guild colors displaying on his outfit. He made his way among the crowd until he was right in front of the victim's body. Only then he took the floor and introduced himself.
"Greetings, everybody. My name is Royznod, and I work for the Ravnican Agency of Magicological Investigations. People usually call me just 'Detective Roy'. It's clear that we have a case here…" He took a look at the body with the arrow piercing its heart. "...and we also have a fugitive. I'll go after him right now, but please everybody stay here, I'll be back to ask you questions later."
Roy ran after the hooded figure wearing a blue and black cloak. While Roy was talking to the crowd, the fugitive had gained some distance, but this was Roy's home. He had grown up in this neighborhood and he knew every twist and turn of it. He knew all the shortcuts and the secret passages, while the cloaked figure was clearly not from there, only taking main streets and stopping at most intersections to remind themselves the correct direction to keep running away. That allowed Roy to quickly recover and approach the fugitive from behind. He hadn't had a chance yet to see anything but their back, covered by the blue and black hooded cloak. Roy knew that he had to look behind mere appearances, so while the cloak looked Dimir, he was already guessing whoever was hiding under it was not actually a member of the Dimir.
Roy had almost reached the hooded figure, just a couple steps away from being able to tackle them, when he stumbled on a piece of rock he hadn't seen on the surface of the road. He fell, being projected forward. While falling, he stretched his right arm as long as he could, and that was enough for him to take hold of the bottom of the cloak with his right hand once he had completely fallen on the ground, his belly down on the dirt ground of that road. The hooded figure kept running away, probably without even realizing Roy was holding in his hand the tail of their cloak, which fell down revealing a fellow human male, looking not much older than Roy, with a blonde hair crest and torn leather clothes. As soon as the fugitive realized he wasn't wearing his cloak anymore, he quickly turned around, saw Roy still on the ground with his cloak in hand, and invoked a ball of fire in his hand, throwing it down on the road right in between himself and Roy. A wall of fire immediately formed between the two, and after just a few seconds it extinguished all by itself. The youngster in torn leather was no longer anywhere to be seen, neither by Roy nor by anybody else. He had just disappeared.
At last Roy got back up on his feet, and while he wasn't able to see the fugitive anymore, at least he had seen most of his real body, and most of all he still had his cloak in his own possession. It was clearly a Dimir robe, but the fugitive was evidently not Dimir. If anything, he looked like somebody belonging to the Gruul, judging from his appearance. Roy took a closer look at the cloak in his hands, searching for more clues that might have been there. The cloak had a black background with blue curved motives on it. But there was a third color in there: a dark violet stain at the tail end of the left sleeve, practically on the cuff, even if it was so dark that it meshed almost perfectly with the black background, as if there wasn't actually a third color involved. Noticing nothing else of particular interest on the cloak, Roy made his way back to the crime scene, the plaza where the crowd was still waiting for him to be back, hopefully. If somebody had ignored his advice more than his order and walked away, he didn't really feel like he could have blamed them for doing so.
As Roy was back at the plaza, he noticed that about half of the crowd had indeed ignored his former request and had gone away. Losing potential witnesses, that didn't look like a good start, but Roy was still inexperienced, one of the latest recruits in the Agency. He thought:
"I guess that's the price of getting a piece of evidence: giving up other potential pieces of evidence. Are the people the hierarch was pointing at still here?"
All were except the Izzet goblin, and Roy decided to take the next step in the case by interrogating them.
He started by approaching the Rakdos young girl.
"Hi, boy! You're really nice, I like you. Why don't we spend some time together?"
"We will, but not in the sense you might be implying."
"Yeah, in fact, I didn't mean this investigation, I meant… just to get to know each other, you know?"
"No, you've got it backwards. I want to ask you some questions."
"Me too! Let's start with this one: are you currently engaged?"
"That's not relevant now. Why are you here? I mean, why had you chosen to come here to listen to a Selesnya hierarch's speech?"
"Who cares about the speech? I arrived here and the crowd had already gathered. I just wanted to see what the show of the day was. It couldn't have been anything topping our own shows, and in fact it wasn't."
"Did you know who that hierarch is? Uhm… I mean, was."
"No. I don't know his name, nor I would have wanted to know it anyway. I wasn't certainly going to recruit him for our shows or give him a job in the theater. About you, instead, how would you like to spend some time at our theater? We could go there right now, you know?"
"I've got that you like me, but again, no. Do you work at that theater?"
"Yeah. Performing almost every night. You're invited whenever you want."
"Thank you, but I'm not interested in that kind of shows. It's clear you have nothing to do with this, so if you like your theater so much, you can go back there right now. Again, thank you for your time."
"I do have rehearsals there in a short time. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
"Sure. I have something here that will never match the excitement of a Rakdos show: a case to crack. Feel free to go rehearse your show. I have other people to talk to."
"Too bad for you then. You don't know what you're missing."
"I have to find out what I'm missing. Thanks for your offer anyway."
And he turned his back to her, walking away.
Roy reached the old Orzhov lady.
"Good morning, madam. Would you mind if I asked you some questions?"
"Sure, but each question will cost you two zinos. Including the one you've just made me."
Roy sighed.
"I guess you Orzhov have to make money from everything, don't you?"
"That's two more zinos."
"I'll take it as a yes. I'll go straight to the point or this will cost me a fortune…"
"Who says it won't anyway?"
"...did you know that hierarch personally? Why did he point at you specifically out of all the Orzhov members here?"
"Oh, good! A double one! That's four more zinos!"
"If I have to pay money, I'd like to be paying for some actual answers if you don't mind."
The Orzhov lady shrugged.
"The customer is always right. No, I didn't know him, and I don't know why he chose me out of all the few Orzhov here. More questions, please."
"Alright, I've already understood. You're here to gain money by all means necessary, not to kill."
"Is that a question? Could you please reformulate it in the form of a question?"
"No, I can't. I think I'm done with you. It can't be you or anyone else from your guild. You only think about money. What would the Orzhov have to gain economically from killing a Selesnya hierarch? Nothing!"
"Uh, this one is nice! I wasn't expecting another one at the end of your reasoning! Two more zinos!"
"Ok. Waiter, I'm ready for the check. How much is it?"
"Good, another one! That makes twelve zinos, unless you have more of course!"
"No, I don't. Here. I'm not sure how legal it is, but I want to move on. Just take them."
"Thank you. Have a nice day!"
As he turned away from the Orzhov lady, he saw the Simic merfolk already walking towards him cursing the loxodon still lying down lifeless next to them, showing no respect for him despite his death.
"He's just mad! People like him will never understand! I mean, he called our experiments 'horrifying'! Weren't the Selesnya supposed to love nature? Then how is wanting to improve upon it so bad to them? And he didn't even answer me!"
"Well, I admit some of them aren't exactly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen…"
"They are a step towards perfection, not the realization of our final goal. It's trial and error, each new one is better than the ones before it. And once we get to the ultimate life form, only then we will think how to make it good-looking. First function, then form."
"It looks like there might be something in common with the process of solving a case there."
"Maybe you're not that far from us then, aren't you?"
"That's a very good question for me to think about. I'll let your guild know if I ever decide I want to join it. But not for now. Did you know that hierarch before?"
"No, and now I wouldn't want to know him anyway even if he were still alive. I'm so angry at him right now that I could kill him myself if somebody else hadn't already…"
"Ok, so then I guess it wasn't you. Maybe somebody else from your guild?"
"We Simic don't need to shoot arrows at people to kill them. There are better ways, like for example feeding them to one or more of our Sharktocrabs… Maybe they could still have him now after all…"
"I'm afraid his body is evidence and nobody can alter the crime scene anyway. But I'll take your offer under consideration once the body can be disposed of. I'll consider your guild clear for now. In the meantime, don't touch the body in any way, you or anybody else from your guild. Thank you."
Given that the Izzet goblin had already run away in fear, only the Golgari elf was left. "I will have to contact the Izzet somehow later", Roy thought. Then he went to talk to the elf.
"Are you a Golgari assassin?"
"Golgari, yes. Assassin, no."
"But you Golgari deal a lot with death in your guild."
"That's true. Death is just a part of life, and can always feed new life anyway, just like fertilizer helps the growth of a seed into a new plant."
"Golgari agricultural methods are already questionable enough. I'm not sure I want to know more about them."
"Just know that body could still be of use…"
"The Simic have already claimed it once it can be disposed of."
"Too bad then. Can I help you in some other way?"
"Maybe. Can I show you something?"
"Sure."
"This was the cloak the runaway was wearing. I managed to retrieve it. Can you see this violet stain at the end of the left sleeve?"
"Yes, I see it. It blends over the black background but it's still definitely visible anyway."
"Could it be some kind of poison? Your guild knows poisons quite well."
"Indeed. It could very easily be a poison, but it doesn't look like one of ours. This is too rough. We use more care with poisons. Our ones wouldn't leave a visible stain on a piece of clothing. We like our poisons to be invisible."
"Like the Dimir?"
"Yes, I guess that's something our guild might have in common with theirs. But I don't think this is Dimir either."
"The cloak sure is. I mean, just look at its colors."
"The cloak is, but the poison doesn't look like one of theirs to me. And it's certainly not one we Golgari would use either."
"So I guess I can assume for the moment that this was neither your guild nor the Dimir. Which other guilds use poisons?"
"The Rakdos sure could. The Gruul too. Heck, even the Selesnya themselves!"
"You're right, I can't exclude an internal Selesnya feud. They have archers too, and maybe they could have dressed the runaway to look like a Gruul boy, hidden under a Dimir cloak for extra safety..."
"Who knows?"
"Well, thanks for your help I guess."
"You're welcome. Glad I could help."
Roy called the nearest Azorius arrester and told them to send everybody away and take the stained cloak and the body, with the arrow still attached to it, to the evidence lockers in the Agency's headquarters. He didn't need to talk to that arrester to have a contact in the Azorius though. There was another connection that he knew very well, and that he would have very easily had access to if he wanted to talk about this with them, just like there was another one, or even multiple ones, in the Boros. He made a mental note to talk to them later. Now he had to hear from the remaining guilds, maybe the major suspects for different reasons: the fugitive archer looked like a Gruul young man wearing a Dimir cloak, who could have acted on behalf of his own guild or might have been hired by a different one, maybe the same Dimir who could have provided him with the cloak themselves. Then there was the runaway goblin, who clearly belonged to the Izzet, and also the Selesnya themselves, maybe because of some kind of power struggle within the guild. Or maybe whoever hired that archer didn't even belong to a guild. After all, the majority of citizens on Ravnica were guildless, just like Roy himself. That couldn't be ruled out either. But now it was already late, and the night was starting to fall on the city. It was time for Roy to go back home, and then straight to bed to be fresh in the morning and reprise his investigation. But that would have needed to wait for tomorrow.
One pierced heart, two mindful horns
EPISODE 1
Entering the crime scene
On Ravnica, a long time has passed since the original Guildpact was first written by the paruns and then broken by Agrus Kos, since the Simic were reborn from the Zonots, since the Implicit Maze was run and Jace Beleren became the Living Guildpact, since several guildleaders were killed, or killed again in the case of the Obzedat, since Nicol Bolas invaded the plane with his army of Eternals, including God-Eternals who all found their demise during the War of the Spark, since Niv-Mizzet became the new Living Guildpact on that same day, and even since the recent Phyrexian invasion of the Multiverse. All of that was gone now, and the ones that matter are the ones who are alive today. Today, not yesterday, last week, or even last month. Those are not the ones that count. The ones being made of living flesh and bones, not those who are only bones if they're lucky, or the ones who are made of so many beings fused together that you can't even be sure who or what they are. Normal Ravnican people building a new normality for the plane of Ravnica and for themselves, that's what really matters now.
In a forgotten and unknown neighborhood of the city-plane, far away from the buzz of the Tenth District, a Selesnya loxodon hierarch was holding a speech in a public plaza in front of a crowd of people. Many of them wore no guild colors, while others did. The former were actually the majority, though the number of the latter was also significant enough. Not all the guilds were represented though. The hierarch himself was intentionally pointing out the ones who were present in front of him, accusing all of them of something morally wrong.
"You!", he said pointing his fingers against a human young woman dressed in red and black. "You and your patron do nothing but seeding chaos into our city! With the excuse of keeping him pleased, you also keep the killing going on in your theaters, and you even call it a 'show'! You're using death for the enjoyment of others, but what will happen when you will be the one called to be the volunteer for one of your very well known 'tricks' on stage, as you like to call them? Will you enjoy your own death?"
"And you!" He pointed at a young male elf dressed in black and green. "You too exploit death! You say it's a natural part of life, while at the same time you deal in poisons and dubious agriculture. What's the fertilizer for your plants? Dead bodies? Obviously yes, and obviously ones you've unnaturally killed yourself, not certainly ones who died from actual natural causes. You're even worse than the Rakdos, at least they do it under the light of day…"
"Our shows are always at night!", the woman the hierarch was addressing before shouted. The loxodon ignored her. "...while you do that in the dark of the undercity, both literally and figuratively. Learn not to hide the fact that you're also using death for your own purposes. Life is something you're not supposed to play with. But you're not alone in that. Guess who also plays with life?"
"You!" This time he pointed his finger towards a merfolk woman dressed in green and blue. "You and your abominations are an insult to the nature that both you and we should defend!"
"Just for your information, those that you call 'abominations' are actually called 'krasis', and they are scientific experiments."
"They shouldn't exist at all! And if they do, it's exactly because you have fun playing with life in an unnatural way. Ravnica would be better if you just stopped meshing different species together! Or would you like to be fused with, say, a five-armed spider?"
"Spiders have eight of those, and they are legs, not arms."
"Making it even more unnatural, good! So would you personally like to be fused with an unnatural kind of spider? Because that's exactly how you treat nature. Or mistreat, as I should have actually said. As a tool to use in your horrifying so-called 'biological experiments', that's how you use it!"
"And that's their name because that's exactly what they are, biological experiments for the improvement of nature!"
But the Selesnya hierarch was already too focused on his next targets to reply. He was using both his fingers to point out people in the crowd. His right index finger was indicating a male goblin dressed in red and blue, while his left index finger an old human lady wearing a luxury black fur over white shirts and pants. The goblin instantly became visibly anxious, and had trouble standing still among the crowd. The lady hadn't moved a single facial muscle yet.
"Nature is under no debt and no obligation to adhere to your theories, despite how strongly both of you would like that not to be the case, but unfortunately I have to tell you that's exactly the case." The goblin was already running away, horrified and scared at the same time. The lady still had to move a single facial muscle, like if she just didn't care about what that boring loxodon had to say, and didn't even want to care. "I will just have the Syndicate bankrupt him. Nature might not have debts, but he certainly will, and very soon." Such must have been her thoughts, but she didn't say a single word aloud. It's not that she wouldn't dare to say it, rather that she just didn't care enough to say it.
The loxodon reprised. "And all of you aren't even the worst. I don't see any representatives of the Gruul clans here now, but let me tell you: they are the worst! Their ancient gods! Not a single god of nature or growth, mind you, they are all gods of destruction! The one they call Ilharg! Nothing more than a giant, angry and hungry boar. A boar that's supposed to bring the end of times? Prophesied to bring some kind of End-Raze? A boar is a boar, with its instincts, that's for sure, but one that will supposedly come one day out of nowhere to destroy nature instead of protecting it? Provided that the Gruul even know what protecting something means… A boar that sets grass on fire instead of just eating it as it's supposed to do? I'd really wanna see that! I hope that prophecy actually comes true someday, but I have big doubts about that…" He started laughing. "...which if you prefer me to say it in another way, just means I don't believe it, not even a single word of it! Well, if I wanna keep having some good laughs about it, I hope that at least in that moment I'm still ali—"
A moment. A loxodon body on the ground. An arrow, shot with extreme precision directly at his heart. A second for everybody to turn their heads. A figure running away with a bow in their hand and vials of violet poison coming out of their cloak's pockets. Eyes of a crowd watching… him? Her? Them? Who knows… that figure from the back. A blue and black hooded cloak disguising whoever that figure was. No one knowing who they (maybe?) were. No one chasing after them. A collective shock, and a consequently apparently successful runaway. No one who could recognize that figure anyway. Who could be under their blue and black disguise?
Not a single person from the crowd the Selesnya hierarch was talking to had dared to walk away. All eyes were pointing at the dead loxodon body with an arrow sticking out of his heart. One of the people in the crowd was a young human boy, probably about twenty or so years old judging by his look, with no guild colors displaying on his outfit. He made his way among the crowd until he was right in front of the victim's body. Only then he took the floor and introduced himself.
"Greetings, everybody. My name is Royznod, and I work for the Ravnican Agency of Magicological Investigations. People usually call me just 'Detective Roy'. It's clear that we have a case here…" He took a look at the body with the arrow piercing its heart. "...and we also have a fugitive. I'll go after him right now, but please everybody stay here, I'll be back to ask you questions later."
Roy ran after the hooded figure wearing a blue and black cloak. While Roy was talking to the crowd, the fugitive had gained some distance, but this was Roy's home. He had grown up in this neighborhood and he knew every twist and turn of it. He knew all the shortcuts and the secret passages, while the cloaked figure was clearly not from there, only taking main streets and stopping at most intersections to remind themselves the correct direction to keep running away. That allowed Roy to quickly recover and approach the fugitive from behind. He hadn't had a chance yet to see anything but their back, covered by the blue and black hooded cloak. Roy knew that he had to look behind mere appearances, so while the cloak looked Dimir, he was already guessing whoever was hiding under it was not actually a member of the Dimir.
Roy had almost reached the hooded figure, just a couple steps away from being able to tackle them, when he stumbled on a piece of rock he hadn't seen on the surface of the road. He fell, being projected forward. While falling, he stretched his right arm as long as he could, and that was enough for him to take hold of the bottom of the cloak with his right hand once he had completely fallen on the ground, his belly down on the dirt ground of that road. The hooded figure kept running away, probably without even realizing Roy was holding in his hand the tail of their cloak, which fell down revealing a fellow human male, looking not much older than Roy, with a blonde hair crest and torn leather clothes. As soon as the fugitive realized he wasn't wearing his cloak anymore, he quickly turned around, saw Roy still on the ground with his cloak in hand, and invoked a ball of fire in his hand, throwing it down on the road right in between himself and Roy. A wall of fire immediately formed between the two, and after just a few seconds it extinguished all by itself. The youngster in torn leather was no longer anywhere to be seen, neither by Roy nor by anybody else. He had just disappeared.
At last Roy got back up on his feet, and while he wasn't able to see the fugitive anymore, at least he had seen most of his real body, and most of all he still had his cloak in his own possession. It was clearly a Dimir robe, but the fugitive was evidently not Dimir. If anything, he looked like somebody belonging to the Gruul, judging from his appearance. Roy took a closer look at the cloak in his hands, searching for more clues that might have been there. The cloak had a black background with blue curved motives on it. But there was a third color in there: a dark violet stain at the tail end of the left sleeve, practically on the cuff, even if it was so dark that it meshed almost perfectly with the black background, as if there wasn't actually a third color involved. Noticing nothing else of particular interest on the cloak, Roy made his way back to the crime scene, the plaza where the crowd was still waiting for him to be back, hopefully. If somebody had ignored his advice more than his order and walked away, he didn't really feel like he could have blamed them for doing so.
As Roy was back at the plaza, he noticed that about half of the crowd had indeed ignored his former request and had gone away. Losing potential witnesses, that didn't look like a good start, but Roy was still inexperienced, one of the latest recruits in the Agency. He thought:
"I guess that's the price of getting a piece of evidence: giving up other potential pieces of evidence. Are the people the hierarch was pointing at still here?"
All were except the Izzet goblin, and Roy decided to take the next step in the case by interrogating them.
He started by approaching the Rakdos young girl.
"Hi, boy! You're really nice, I like you. Why don't we spend some time together?"
"We will, but not in the sense you might be implying."
"Yeah, in fact, I didn't mean this investigation, I meant… just to get to know each other, you know?"
"No, you've got it backwards. I want to ask you some questions."
"Me too! Let's start with this one: are you currently engaged?"
"That's not relevant now. Why are you here? I mean, why had you chosen to come here to listen to a Selesnya hierarch's speech?"
"Who cares about the speech? I arrived here and the crowd had already gathered. I just wanted to see what the show of the day was. It couldn't have been anything topping our own shows, and in fact it wasn't."
"Did you know who that hierarch is? Uhm… I mean, was."
"No. I don't know his name, nor I would have wanted to know it anyway. I wasn't certainly going to recruit him for our shows or give him a job in the theater. About you, instead, how would you like to spend some time at our theater? We could go there right now, you know?"
"I've got that you like me, but again, no. Do you work at that theater?"
"Yeah. Performing almost every night. You're invited whenever you want."
"Thank you, but I'm not interested in that kind of shows. It's clear you have nothing to do with this, so if you like your theater so much, you can go back there right now. Again, thank you for your time."
"I do have rehearsals there in a short time. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
"Sure. I have something here that will never match the excitement of a Rakdos show: a case to crack. Feel free to go rehearse your show. I have other people to talk to."
"Too bad for you then. You don't know what you're missing."
"I have to find out what I'm missing. Thanks for your offer anyway."
And he turned his back to her, walking away.
Roy reached the old Orzhov lady.
"Good morning, madam. Would you mind if I asked you some questions?"
"Sure, but each question will cost you two zinos. Including the one you've just made me."
Roy sighed.
"I guess you Orzhov have to make money from everything, don't you?"
"That's two more zinos."
"I'll take it as a yes. I'll go straight to the point or this will cost me a fortune…"
"Who says it won't anyway?"
"...did you know that hierarch personally? Why did he point at you specifically out of all the Orzhov members here?"
"Oh, good! A double one! That's four more zinos!"
"If I have to pay money, I'd like to be paying for some actual answers if you don't mind."
The Orzhov lady shrugged.
"The customer is always right. No, I didn't know him, and I don't know why he chose me out of all the few Orzhov here. More questions, please."
"Alright, I've already understood. You're here to gain money by all means necessary, not to kill."
"Is that a question? Could you please reformulate it in the form of a question?"
"No, I can't. I think I'm done with you. It can't be you or anyone else from your guild. You only think about money. What would the Orzhov have to gain economically from killing a Selesnya hierarch? Nothing!"
"Uh, this one is nice! I wasn't expecting another one at the end of your reasoning! Two more zinos!"
"Ok. Waiter, I'm ready for the check. How much is it?"
"Good, another one! That makes twelve zinos, unless you have more of course!"
"No, I don't. Here. I'm not sure how legal it is, but I want to move on. Just take them."
"Thank you. Have a nice day!"
As he turned away from the Orzhov lady, he saw the Simic merfolk already walking towards him cursing the loxodon still lying down lifeless next to them, showing no respect for him despite his death.
"He's just mad! People like him will never understand! I mean, he called our experiments 'horrifying'! Weren't the Selesnya supposed to love nature? Then how is wanting to improve upon it so bad to them? And he didn't even answer me!"
"Well, I admit some of them aren't exactly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen…"
"They are a step towards perfection, not the realization of our final goal. It's trial and error, each new one is better than the ones before it. And once we get to the ultimate life form, only then we will think how to make it good-looking. First function, then form."
"It looks like there might be something in common with the process of solving a case there."
"Maybe you're not that far from us then, aren't you?"
"That's a very good question for me to think about. I'll let your guild know if I ever decide I want to join it. But not for now. Did you know that hierarch before?"
"No, and now I wouldn't want to know him anyway even if he were still alive. I'm so angry at him right now that I could kill him myself if somebody else hadn't already…"
"Ok, so then I guess it wasn't you. Maybe somebody else from your guild?"
"We Simic don't need to shoot arrows at people to kill them. There are better ways, like for example feeding them to one or more of our Sharktocrabs… Maybe they could still have him now after all…"
"I'm afraid his body is evidence and nobody can alter the crime scene anyway. But I'll take your offer under consideration once the body can be disposed of. I'll consider your guild clear for now. In the meantime, don't touch the body in any way, you or anybody else from your guild. Thank you."
Given that the Izzet goblin had already run away in fear, only the Golgari elf was left. "I will have to contact the Izzet somehow later", Roy thought. Then he went to talk to the elf.
"Are you a Golgari assassin?"
"Golgari, yes. Assassin, no."
"But you Golgari deal a lot with death in your guild."
"That's true. Death is just a part of life, and can always feed new life anyway, just like fertilizer helps the growth of a seed into a new plant."
"Golgari agricultural methods are already questionable enough. I'm not sure I want to know more about them."
"Just know that body could still be of use…"
"The Simic have already claimed it once it can be disposed of."
"Too bad then. Can I help you in some other way?"
"Maybe. Can I show you something?"
"Sure."
"This was the cloak the runaway was wearing. I managed to retrieve it. Can you see this violet stain at the end of the left sleeve?"
"Yes, I see it. It blends over the black background but it's still definitely visible anyway."
"Could it be some kind of poison? Your guild knows poisons quite well."
"Indeed. It could very easily be a poison, but it doesn't look like one of ours. This is too rough. We use more care with poisons. Our ones wouldn't leave a visible stain on a piece of clothing. We like our poisons to be invisible."
"Like the Dimir?"
"Yes, I guess that's something our guild might have in common with theirs. But I don't think this is Dimir either."
"The cloak sure is. I mean, just look at its colors."
"The cloak is, but the poison doesn't look like one of theirs to me. And it's certainly not one we Golgari would use either."
"So I guess I can assume for the moment that this was neither your guild nor the Dimir. Which other guilds use poisons?"
"The Rakdos sure could. The Gruul too. Heck, even the Selesnya themselves!"
"You're right, I can't exclude an internal Selesnya feud. They have archers too, and maybe they could have dressed the runaway to look like a Gruul boy, hidden under a Dimir cloak for extra safety..."
"Who knows?"
"Well, thanks for your help I guess."
"You're welcome. Glad I could help."
Roy called the nearest Azorius arrester and told them to send everybody away and take the stained cloak and the body, with the arrow still attached to it, to the evidence lockers in the Agency's headquarters. He didn't need to talk to that arrester to have a contact in the Azorius though. There was another connection that he knew very well, and that he would have very easily had access to if he wanted to talk about this with them, just like there was another one, or even multiple ones, in the Boros. He made a mental note to talk to them later. Now he had to hear from the remaining guilds, maybe the major suspects for different reasons: the fugitive archer looked like a Gruul young man wearing a Dimir cloak, who could have acted on behalf of his own guild or might have been hired by a different one, maybe the same Dimir who could have provided him with the cloak themselves. Then there was the runaway goblin, who clearly belonged to the Izzet, and also the Selesnya themselves, maybe because of some kind of power struggle within the guild. Or maybe whoever hired that archer didn't even belong to a guild. After all, the majority of citizens on Ravnica were guildless, just like Roy himself. That couldn't be ruled out either. But now it was already late, and the night was starting to fall on the city. It was time for Roy to go back home, and then straight to bed to be fresh in the morning and reprise his investigation. But that would have needed to wait for tomorrow.
Main Challenge - Design a creature card that has either disguise or cloak, but NOT both at the same time.
Subchallenge 1 - Exactly one among your card's mana value, power, and toughness is exactly 2. Another one of those values is exactly 3. The last one of those values is exactly 4.
Subchallenge 2 - Choose one or both —
• Your creature is able to kill a fish (aka a face-down Bubble Smuggler under an opponent's control) while NOT in the combat phase, unconditionally, and also surviving after doing so, even if its controller turns it face up in response to whatever you're doing. For the sake of this Subchallenge, assume you have infinite mana. You do NOT have infinite of any resources other than mana though. (0.5 points) (Please see clarifications.)
• The card's rules text contains both the word "damage" AND the word "face". (0.5 points)
Clarifications (Subchallenge 2, mode 1 updated on March 4rd, 10:40 pm CET to add haywire's questions)
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Main Challenge
• There are two requirements that your card has to meet at the same time to qualify:
1. It's a creature card, which means it has the "creature" card type printed on its type line. A non-creature card that can be animated into a creature does NOT count. As long as your card has the "creature" card type in its type line, it can have any additional supertypes, card types, and subtypes.
2. The card has either the disguise keyword ability or the cloak keyword action in its rules text, but NOT both at the same time. If it has both at the same time, the Main Challenge is failed and the card consequently DQ'ed. Having both is like having none as far as the Main Challenge is concerned.
• Granting disguise and/or cloak to other things does NOT count. The card has to actually have disguise or cloak itself.
Subchallenge 1
• Essentially, you have three variables (mana value, power, and toughness), and you have to assign each of them the number 2, 3, or 4, using each of the three numbers only once. As all people who studied basic combinatorics in their life should understand, there are only six ways this can be done. You have to make one of the following to pass this Subchallenge:
- A 2/3 with mana value 4.
- A 3/2 with mana value 4.
- A 2/4 with mana value 3.
- A 4/2 with mana value 3.
- A 3/4 with mana value 2.
- A 4/3 with mana value 2.
• Any other combination of mana value, power, and toughness does NOT pass this Subchallenge.
• With "power" and "toughness", I mean the printed values, those that you would find in the P/T box in the lower right corner of your card if it were printed for real. Your card can have abilities that can set or modify those values. Here I'm using the verbs "set" and "modify" in their meaning as defined in the CR: for example, the former ("set") is like when you say "CARDNAME's base power becomes 5 until end of turn", while the latter ("modify") is applying + and - bonuses, for example if the card has a static ability that makes it get +1/+1 (or receive a +1/+1 counter) if you have metalcraft, delirium, threshold, or whatever other condition you can think of. Both setting and modifying the card's own printed power and/or toughness with its own abilities are allowed for this Subchallenge. If you wonder where that language ("set" and "modify") comes from, it's layers. Specifically, the four sublayers of layer 7: 7a = CDAs, 7b = P/T setting, 7c = P/T modifying, 7d = P/T switching.
• Your card CAN have all the additional costs, alternative costs, cost increases, and/or cost reductions in its rules text that you want. What matters is the mana value, and that's determined exclusively by the symbols in the card's mana cost as printed. How much mana you actually pay to cast your card does NOT matter, only its mana value as determined according to the CR.
• If present, always consider an X in the mana cost to be 0 to determine its mana value, as usual in any game zone but the stack.
• If your card has disguise, the disguise cost does NOT matter for this Subchallenge. That's not included in the variables checked by this Subchallenge, and if you care, that's just because cloak is allowed as well by the Main Challenge and cloak does not have an associated cost to check here. I actually wanted to also include the disguise cost here, but doing that or including cloak in the Main Challenge are mutually exclusive, so I had to choose one. Given my overall plan for the month, I chose the latter, and given my choice, the disguise cost can't matter here.
Subchallenge 2, mode 1
• Given that we're explicitly not in the combat phase, your creature won't be able to kill the fish via combat damage. If your card needs to attack and be blocked by the fish or to block an attacking fish to kill it, and combat interaction is the ONLY way in which your card can kill the fish, then this Subchallenge mode is NOT met.
• Your creature must be able to kill the fish "unconditionally", that means under all possible scenarios outside of combat.
For example, an effect that says "CARDNAME deals damage to target creature an opponent controls equal to the number of creatures you control" will NOT pass this Subchallenge mode, because whether your creature kills the fish or not depends on the number of creatures you control, that must be at least five given that your opponent will turn the fish face up in response. If you have less than five creatures, then that effect does NOT kill the fish, and that's enough for this Subchallenge mode to NOT be met.
Compare that to an effect that says "CARDNAME deals 5 damage to target creature an opponent controls." This WOULD pass this Subchallenge mode, as it will ALWAYS (key word here) kill the fish even if your opponent turns it face up in response.
• If your creature can only kill the fish if the fish meets some requirements (such as only if the fish is tapped, only if the fish has attacked or dealt combat damage this turn, only if the fish's controller has drawn two or more cards this turn, only if there is another copy of the fish in its controller's graveyard, etc...) then this Subchallenge mode is NOT met. Your creature has to be able to kill the fish always and unconditionally, that is regardless of the fish's status or any other condition.
• Your card CAN deal noncombat damage to the fish. The only damage that doesn't count for this Subchallenge mode is combat damage, as we're not in the combat phase.
• As we assume you have infinite mana of all five colors and also colorless should it matter, you will always be able to pay the two additional mana for the ward ability of the face-down fish plus whatever other mana cost may need to be paid.
• You do NOT have infinite life though, or infinite of any other resources other than mana, so you can't count on those to kill the fish.
• From the discussion thread:
Subchallenge 2, mode 2
• The word "face" does NOT necessarily have to be used in the context of "face up" or "face down", though it can obviously be just that as well.
• The hyphenated "face-up" and "face-down" also count for this specific requirement.
• On the contrary, if your card's name includes one or both of the required words, the card's name being repeated in the rules text does NOT count, as it just stands for "this object" according to the CR.
• All text in italics (including reminder text, ability words, flavor text, and eventual flavor words like those they sometimes put before abilities in Universes Beyond cards) also does NOT count.
• The plural or third-person verb "faces", as well as the past participle "faced", and any other similar variations are NOT allowed. The same is true for the word "damage": for example, the past participle "damaged" is NOT allowed. They have to be the exact strings of characters F-A-C-E and D-A-M-A-G-E with a space both right before (unless they are somehow at the beginning of a line) and right after it (unless there is a punctuation mark there).
If you have any more questions, feel free to post them in the MCC discussion thread.
• There are two requirements that your card has to meet at the same time to qualify:
1. It's a creature card, which means it has the "creature" card type printed on its type line. A non-creature card that can be animated into a creature does NOT count. As long as your card has the "creature" card type in its type line, it can have any additional supertypes, card types, and subtypes.
2. The card has either the disguise keyword ability or the cloak keyword action in its rules text, but NOT both at the same time. If it has both at the same time, the Main Challenge is failed and the card consequently DQ'ed. Having both is like having none as far as the Main Challenge is concerned.
• Granting disguise and/or cloak to other things does NOT count. The card has to actually have disguise or cloak itself.
Subchallenge 1
• Essentially, you have three variables (mana value, power, and toughness), and you have to assign each of them the number 2, 3, or 4, using each of the three numbers only once. As all people who studied basic combinatorics in their life should understand, there are only six ways this can be done. You have to make one of the following to pass this Subchallenge:
- A 2/3 with mana value 4.
- A 3/2 with mana value 4.
- A 2/4 with mana value 3.
- A 4/2 with mana value 3.
- A 3/4 with mana value 2.
- A 4/3 with mana value 2.
• Any other combination of mana value, power, and toughness does NOT pass this Subchallenge.
• With "power" and "toughness", I mean the printed values, those that you would find in the P/T box in the lower right corner of your card if it were printed for real. Your card can have abilities that can set or modify those values. Here I'm using the verbs "set" and "modify" in their meaning as defined in the CR: for example, the former ("set") is like when you say "CARDNAME's base power becomes 5 until end of turn", while the latter ("modify") is applying + and - bonuses, for example if the card has a static ability that makes it get +1/+1 (or receive a +1/+1 counter) if you have metalcraft, delirium, threshold, or whatever other condition you can think of. Both setting and modifying the card's own printed power and/or toughness with its own abilities are allowed for this Subchallenge. If you wonder where that language ("set" and "modify") comes from, it's layers. Specifically, the four sublayers of layer 7: 7a = CDAs, 7b = P/T setting, 7c = P/T modifying, 7d = P/T switching.
• Your card CAN have all the additional costs, alternative costs, cost increases, and/or cost reductions in its rules text that you want. What matters is the mana value, and that's determined exclusively by the symbols in the card's mana cost as printed. How much mana you actually pay to cast your card does NOT matter, only its mana value as determined according to the CR.
• If present, always consider an X in the mana cost to be 0 to determine its mana value, as usual in any game zone but the stack.
• If your card has disguise, the disguise cost does NOT matter for this Subchallenge. That's not included in the variables checked by this Subchallenge, and if you care, that's just because cloak is allowed as well by the Main Challenge and cloak does not have an associated cost to check here. I actually wanted to also include the disguise cost here, but doing that or including cloak in the Main Challenge are mutually exclusive, so I had to choose one. Given my overall plan for the month, I chose the latter, and given my choice, the disguise cost can't matter here.
Subchallenge 2, mode 1
• Given that we're explicitly not in the combat phase, your creature won't be able to kill the fish via combat damage. If your card needs to attack and be blocked by the fish or to block an attacking fish to kill it, and combat interaction is the ONLY way in which your card can kill the fish, then this Subchallenge mode is NOT met.
• Your creature must be able to kill the fish "unconditionally", that means under all possible scenarios outside of combat.
For example, an effect that says "CARDNAME deals damage to target creature an opponent controls equal to the number of creatures you control" will NOT pass this Subchallenge mode, because whether your creature kills the fish or not depends on the number of creatures you control, that must be at least five given that your opponent will turn the fish face up in response. If you have less than five creatures, then that effect does NOT kill the fish, and that's enough for this Subchallenge mode to NOT be met.
Compare that to an effect that says "CARDNAME deals 5 damage to target creature an opponent controls." This WOULD pass this Subchallenge mode, as it will ALWAYS (key word here) kill the fish even if your opponent turns it face up in response.
• If your creature can only kill the fish if the fish meets some requirements (such as only if the fish is tapped, only if the fish has attacked or dealt combat damage this turn, only if the fish's controller has drawn two or more cards this turn, only if there is another copy of the fish in its controller's graveyard, etc...) then this Subchallenge mode is NOT met. Your creature has to be able to kill the fish always and unconditionally, that is regardless of the fish's status or any other condition.
• Your card CAN deal noncombat damage to the fish. The only damage that doesn't count for this Subchallenge mode is combat damage, as we're not in the combat phase.
• As we assume you have infinite mana of all five colors and also colorless should it matter, you will always be able to pay the two additional mana for the ward ability of the face-down fish plus whatever other mana cost may need to be paid.
• You do NOT have infinite life though, or infinite of any other resources other than mana, so you can't count on those to kill the fish.
• From the discussion thread:
bravelion83 wrote: ↑2 months agoAs long as it manages to kill the fish under all possible circumstances and even if its controller turns it face up, then yes. If either ability (the sacrifice one and/or the control changing one) has any restriction that might exclude the fish in some circumstances, then no. For example, the following WOULD pass Subchallenge 2, mode 1:Lorn Asbord Schutta wrote: ↑2 months ago@bravelion83 For March round 1, if my submission has an activated ability involving sacrifice of another creature as a cost and an ability to gain control of Bubble Smuggler, does it satisfy subchallange 2?
CARDNAME (probably given the effects?)
Creature — Whatever (?)
Disguise
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield or is turned face up, gain control of target creature an opponent controls.
, Sacrifice another creature: CARDNAME gains indestructible until end of turn.
Some flavor text.
?/?
You can always take control of the fish (with infinite mana to pay the ward cost of the face-down fish and even if your opponent turns it face up in response) and then you can always sacrifice it. Good. Instead, the following would NOT pass Subchallenge 2, mode 1:
CARDNAME (probably given the effects?)
Creature — Whatever (?)
Disguise
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield or is turned face up, gain control of target creature with power 2 or less an opponent controls.
, Sacrifice another creature: CARDNAME gains indestructible until end of turn.
Some flavor text.
?/?
You can target the face-down fish to gain control of it (its power is 2 and you have infinite mana to pay the ward cost, so no problem there), but your opponent will always turn it face up in response (it's part of the Subchallenge mode), so when the ability tries to resolve the fish's power is 6 so it's no longer a legal target and it would "fizzle" (be removed from the stack with no effect). You wouldn't gain control of the fish, let alone sacrifice it. The same is true if you move the restriction to the sacrifice ability, the following would also NOT pass Subchallenge 2, mode 1:
CARDNAME (probably given the effects?)
Creature — Whatever (?)
Disguise
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield or is turned face up, gain control of target creature an opponent controls.
, Sacrifice another creature with power 2 or less: CARDNAME gains indestructible until end of turn.
Some flavor text.
?/?
Here you would always gain control of the fish, but your opponent will turn it face up in response, so you will gain control of the 6/5 face-up fish. Its power is 6, so you can't sacrifice it because it doesn't have power 2 or less as required by the last ability's activation cost. Thus, Subchallenge 2, mode 1 is NOT met here.
Hope this helps. Adding this to the clarifications spoiler.
bravelion83 wrote: ↑2 months agoIt depends. Your opponent will always turn the fish face up in response but only if they're able to of course, like everything else in Magic. You can only do things you're allowed to do. Given that you say that "permanents can't be turned face up", your opponent won't be allowed to turn the fish face up so they won't because they can't, so the fish stays a face-down 2/2 with ward , and dealing only 2 damage to the fish will be enough to kill it. Ward is not a problem as you have infinite mana. Any wording that unconditionally prevents your opponent from turning their permanents face up will work for this purpose, but the Watchdog's effect is NOT "unconditional", as it only lets you do it on your turn, so it does NOT count. If you remove all conditionality using a wording like the one you proposed in your last question, then yes, it will always work so Subchallenge 2, mode 1 will indeed be met. For it to be satisfied, you have to be able to do it at any time, regardless of whose turn it is. Hope this helps. Adding this to the clarifications.haywire wrote: ↑2 months ago@bravelion83 for march round 1, if my card only deals 2 damage to the fish, but has an ability like Karlov Watchdog that prevents my opponent from turning it face up, does that satisfy the subchallenge?
edited to add: and is the answer different if my card simply says "Permanents can't be turned face up" to remove questions of conditionality?
bravelion83 wrote: ↑2 months ago"Kill" here is shorthand for "makes the fish die", and "dies" implies that only the graveyard counts as that's the Magic meaning of the verb "to die" according to the CR. You have to send the fish specifically to the graveyard. Exiling it or going anywhere other than the graveyard does NOT count. Adding this too to the clarifications.haywire wrote: ↑2 months ago@bravelion83 sounds good, that's what I assumed. I do have one more question I just thought of on subchallenge 2.
For "kill the fish", does it have to be sent to graveyard? Or do any of exile/bottom of library/top of library/hand etc count? And in the exile case, does permanent exile versus temporary exile matter?
Subchallenge 2, mode 2
• The word "face" does NOT necessarily have to be used in the context of "face up" or "face down", though it can obviously be just that as well.
• The hyphenated "face-up" and "face-down" also count for this specific requirement.
• On the contrary, if your card's name includes one or both of the required words, the card's name being repeated in the rules text does NOT count, as it just stands for "this object" according to the CR.
• All text in italics (including reminder text, ability words, flavor text, and eventual flavor words like those they sometimes put before abilities in Universes Beyond cards) also does NOT count.
• The plural or third-person verb "faces", as well as the past participle "faced", and any other similar variations are NOT allowed. The same is true for the word "damage": for example, the past participle "damaged" is NOT allowed. They have to be the exact strings of characters F-A-C-E and D-A-M-A-G-E with a space both right before (unless they are somehow at the beginning of a line) and right after it (unless there is a punctuation mark there).
If you have any more questions, feel free to post them in the MCC discussion thread.
DEADLINES
Design deadline: Wednesday, March 6th 2024 at 23:59 Eastern Time
Judging deadline: Saturday, March 9th 2024 at 23:59 Eastern Time
Eventual time extensions required WILL eat time from the next round to realign with the calendar, so please ask them only if you really need them. This is for both players and judges. As a reminder, here is the calendar:
March MCC calendar
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RUBRIC
MCC Rubric
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The MCC Rubric is given below, in an easily "copy and pasted" form. (Courtesy of Rithaniel.)
Code: Select all
[b]Design[/b]
[b](X/3) Appeal[/b] - Do the different player psychographics (Timmy/Johhny/Spike) have a use for the card?
[b](X/3) Elegance[/b] - Is the card easily understandable at a glance? Do all the flavor and mechanics combined as a whole make sense?
[b]Development[/b]
[b](X/3) Viability[/b] - 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?
[b](X/3) Balance[/b] - 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?
[b]Creativity[/b]
[b](X/3) Uniqueness[/b] - 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"?
[b](X/3) Flavor[/b] - 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?
[b]Polish[/b]
[b](X/3) Quality[/b] - Points deducted for incorrect spelling, grammar, and templating.
[b](X/2) Main Challenge (*)[/b] - Was the main challenge satisfied? Was it approached in a unique or interesting way? Does the card fit the intent of the challenge?
[b](X/2) Subchallenges[/b] - One point awarded per satisfied subchallenge condition.
[b]Total: X/25[/b]
*An entry with 0 points here is subject to disqualification.JUDGES
bravelion83
Ink-Treader
We might or might not need more judges. If you're interested, sign up in the judge signup thread.
PLAYERS
Everyone can enter this round. Just reply to this thread posting a card that meets the Main Challenge and any number (that includes zero) of Subchallenges. Future rounds will only be open to those who advance. Come join us!
A reminder to everyone: In the MCC, putting rarity on cards is mandatory! If you don't put a rarity on your card, expect huge deductions in both Viability AND Quality.
BRACKETS
These brackets were determined by dice throwing. Top 5 from each bracket advance to the next round. This is an exception due to the high number of last minute entries. (Thanks everyone!)
Judge: bravelion83
AnotherAlias
haywire
Henlock
KB52665
Komandon
marioguy3
shullz
Subject16
Judge: Ink-Treader
Caspernicus
Freyleyes
kwanyeegor-ii
Lorn Asbord Schutta
MonoRedMage
netn10
slimytrout
void_nothing
Judging may begin right now.
