The MCC Discussion Thread

[haywire]

@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?

[bravelion83]

@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?

"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.

[void_nothing]

Going to finish my February MCC round 3 judgments tomorrow. This week has been exhausting thus far.

[Ink-Treader]

My March MCC Round 1 judgments are finished.

[bravelion83]

My March MCC Round 1 judgments are finished.

Currently working on mine. Round 2 will be posted only after the judging deadline for Round 1 anyway. The time between now and then is to allow eventual requests of clarifications, etc... about the judgments. Feel free to post those here if they are only about your own card, but if any third parties are involved, please do it via pm. Thanks. Now back to writing my own judgments.

EDIT - My own judgments are complete as well. This means that you all have more than a whole day to ask for clarifications and such about our judgments while the scores aren't final yet, so things can actually change and your feedback might have actual consequences. Please just remember this:

If your request involves any third parties in any way, you should do it via pm to your judge and NOT here. Otherwise, if it's just about your own card, you're more than welcome to post it right here.

We're not used to it anymore, but this is the way this contest should and did once work. Thank you so much for being even quicker than me, @Ink-Treader! Awesome job with that!

If you have questions, I and my co-judge are here (or via pm as I said). Round 2 will only be posted after judgments are final, which means after the judging deadline.

[Raptorchan]

Going to finish my February MCC round 3 judgments tomorrow. This week has been exhausting thus far.

Same for me, going to finish mine tonight.

[haywire]

@bravelion83 not that it matters for placement, but my entry can kill the fish. By choosing modes 1 and 2 of his ability and turning himself face down, with infinite mana you can loop to deal infinite damage to creatures

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 not that it matters for placement, but my entry can kill the fish. By choosing modes 1 and 2 of his ability and turning himself face down, with infinite mana you can loop to deal infinite damage to creatures

True. When doing the Subchallenges section, I mentally processed it as it were "choose one" and not two. With two modes you can indeed do it. I've also received a pm from another player about some of my own judgments. I'll review my judgments right now. There might be some score adjustment but I don't think it will change anything about who advances to the next round. Thank you for making me notice.

EDIT - Now a bonus Bear has appeared in my judgment post... It was indeed possible to make a Bear that killed the fish, and while meeting all challenges on top of that! Not sure if it would have been the best card to submit, but it was possible.

[Komandon]

@bravelion83 thank you for mentioning the color pie shift. Originally I had it deal 3 damage to you too but didn't seem right. I am an old school player and miss cards like Psychic Venom. Actually trying to make a premodern only EDH deck that takes advantage of the old color pie. I need to get use to the current pie. Maybe I should have maid the disguise only red. Or whole card red and impulse draw/discard and draw. Until I looked at all 40 cards I didn't notice how more common non-hybrid disguise face up was. Was so focused on the ability to see not just face down on the battlefield cards but hideaway, foretell, etc so make it more playable outside of standard and limited that I should have paid more attention to the other ability.



My only confusion is " With flavor text, this card is microtext (ten lines and three breaks in the MSE M15 frame). "

I see you added " In the MSE M15 frame you can have at most:
• Eight lines or fewer with any number of paragraph breaks.
• Nine lines with at most four breaks.
• Ten lines with at most two breaks.
• Eleven lines with a single break.
• Everything that is twelve lines or more is microtext regardless of breaks."

And " In the M15 frame, you can have:
• Up to eight lines with however many breaks you want.
• Nine lines with up to four breaks. If you have more than four breaks, it's microtext.
• Ten lines with up to two breaks. If you have more than two breaks, it's microtext.
• Eleven lines and a single break. If you have more than one break, it's microtext.
• If you have twelve lines of more, it's microtext regardless of breaks"

Are the breaks a new subject. So my mechanic, disguise is one, face-up ability is two. The triggered ability is three and the flavor text is four. I count 9 minus any reminder text that is a good thing I didn't add. Unless is there a character limit per line. Most lines I can find including flavor text and reminder text which this example has none is 9 Aurelia's Vindicator. I should have looked at the disguise cards more before finishing. Out of the 40 cards with disguise only 12 had flavor text and none are rare like my entry. My example card I think longest sentence included spaces is 40 characters. Mine is 65. So I would guess I would have more that 12 lines if the limit is 40.
If not the space inbetween paragraphs would still make it 12 I think. (Sorry writing while thinking) Which is still points off.

[Komandon]

@bravelion83 wow I just realized I never got a 3/3 for Appeal. Maybe me focusing on the ability I built around was a good thing. Even if I didn't get to advance getting 3/3 for Appeal is huge for me. Thank you.

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 thank you for mentioning the color pie shift. (...)

There are a lot of them since the first years of Magic. The best advice I can give you about it is to not get too attached to how things were back then where there wasn't actually much of a color pie, if the flavor made sense it was enough. It's not like that nowadays. There are lists of which specific effects belong in each color. The best resource about that is Maro's latest "Mechanical color pie" article. Take a look at it when you design your card for the next round and see if it helps you with that. I think it will.

Maybe I should have maid the disguise only red. Or whole card red and impulse draw/discard and draw. (...)

There are multiple ways that your card could be fixed, the easiest of them being just making both the mana cost and the disguise cost gold blue-red and not hybrid blue-red. Make the disguise cost 1UR and the card is suddenly perfect in the color pie! That's what I would have personally done.

My only confusion is " With flavor text, this card is microtext (ten lines and three breaks in the MSE M15 frame). " (...)

I'll explain it to you. "Microtext" is defined as text in the text box of a card (so the sum of rules text, reminder text, and flavor text) that is so long that the card would have to use a font that's too small to actually print. That's a bad thing for several reasons, like for example:
- bad readability,
- having to spend a lot of your mental resources just to parse the text and understand what it does rather than how it interacts with the current board state, which will cause some players to go into mental overload and just ignore the card,
- generating an overall and average word count in the set that's too high.

These are just the first ones that come to my mind, there are even more reasons for sure. So your card needs to be penalized if the text in its text box is too long. But how long? That's the question. One way you could do it is with a simple word count, but that's not how I do it, because there can be cases where the word count is low but the font is still too small, like for example if your text needs to be broken in a lot of small lines, or if you have a very long flavor text. By observing historic trends of real Magic cards in modern design and analyzing the smallest fonts that they've been willing to print, things like the Eternal Masters printing of Animate Dead (ten lines and two breaks) or the Thirtieth Anniversary set, I and other people have noticed patterns based not on word count, but on the number of lines and paragraph breaks (which I ofter shorten to just "breaks"). Those patterns and observations of real printed cards have generated those limits that you mention and that I often put as a reminder in my judgment posts.

Now the problem becomes: how do you check how many lines and breaks your card has? You have to stay within those limits for your text not to be microtext and not be penalized in Elegance for sure, maybe Quality too sometimes. The answer is to use software like Magic Set Editor (MSE for short, just look for it in your favorite search engine and you'll find it immediately), copy/paste the rules text and flavor text in the proper fields there, and see the result. That's what I do. MSE has a lot of different card frames you can use, and the one I use to check for microtext is the M15 frame with flavor bar. I put the text in that frame and count the lines and breaks, counting the flavor bar (or the separation between rules text and flavor text if you use a frame that doesn't have the flavor bar) as one break. If the resulting number of lines and breaks goes over the limit, then that's microtext and I will penalize you, usually mentioning the number of lines and breaks that I've found for your card so that you can check for yourself if it's above those limits. I think that's all there is to know about microtext.

This is how I see your text box in the M15 frame in MSE. I've marked lines and breaks.

You can see it's ten lines and three breaks in total. The limit is that if you have ten lines you can only have up to two breaks, and you have three, and that's too much. Thus this text is microtext, and gets penalized. The fact that it's just barely microtext, only by a single break, doesn't matter.

Hope this helps.

[Raptorchan]

Sorry for the big delay, but my little domesticated demon called Noir landed on the keyboard, refreshing the page and effectively rendering my almost finished work useless, so I had to start it again from scratch and with backups this time.
But finally, it's done so you can relax and wait for the next round - a final one.

[bravelion83]

Round 2 for March is up, including Episode 2 of my own story. The Clarifications spoiler will be filled tonight. Sorry for this delay.

[haywire]

@bravelion83 in the past, there have been issues where I have followed the letter of a challenge but not the spirit, so I wanted to ask for subchallenge 1: would an effect such as "at the beginning of combat on your turn, tap this creature unless you collect evidence 6" pass? To my knowledge, even though it functions as a sort of cost, the CR still sees this ability as an effect.

[slimytrout]

I have to be honest, @bravelion83, I think that Subchallenge 1 requires considerably more rules knowledge than it is appropriate to ask of competitors, especially since it is only round 2 and not the finals. I have been trying to write a post to help people understand the difference between a cost, a trigger, and an effect, and despite writing and rewriting it multiple times, I was forced to give up because I couldn't do so in a concise way. For example, trying to explain why Evidence Examiner doesn't pass the challenge requires a depth of knowledge that I definitely didn't possess 24 hours ago, and I am a fairly experienced magic player, card designer, and contest judge. Personally, I think a more appropriate version of this would have been something like your card uses the "collect evidence" keyword action but not the word "may" -- obviously this changes the content of the subchallenge and allows things like Axebane Ferox to pass, but it also allows people to know whether their entry passes the challenge without poring through the comprehensive rules. I apologize if this is too blunt, but I know how much you care about the MCC and thought you would prefer candid feedback.

P.S. Just so you know @haywire, the rules do see that text as a cost -- see CR 118.12a. But I don't know how you could possibly have intuited that.

[haywire]

@slimytrout appreciate the info.

@bravelion83 I don't have slimy's contest judging/running experience, but I will say "effect" is definitely deeper into the rules granularity than I'm familiar with, and I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable player. I think, in general, the crux of it is that it's not something that ever matters from a gameplay perspective, which is where all of my rules knowledge comes from. I know the difference between "when you do" and "if you do" because it can changes response windows, or how an intervening if clause works because that can be important in a match. But in actual gameplay, the only things that care if you know about what exactly defines a cost or an effect are the things like Sigarda, Host of Herons or Yasharn, Implacable Earth, but those are generally pretty explicit and intuitive. Just to give my 2 cents.

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 in the past, there have been issues where I have followed the letter of a challenge but not the spirit, so I wanted to ask for subchallenge 1: would an effect such as "at the beginning of combat on your turn, tap this creature unless you collect evidence 6" pass? To my knowledge, even though it functions as a sort of cost, the CR still sees this ability as an effect.

No, it does not pass. It's a cost. The "A unless B" means "you may A. If you don't, B." A is a cost, B an effect. In this case, "collect evidence 6" is A (a cost) and "tap this creature" is B (an effect).

118.12a Some spells, activated abilities, and triggered abilities read, "[Do something] unless [a player does something else]." This means the same thing as "[A player may do something else]. If [that player doesn't], [do something]."

As for the rest, I actually believe it's not that counterintuitive what is a cost and what is an effect, even with no knowledge of the CR. A cost is something you need to do to get something. An effect is what actually happens when something resolves. We can go more technical and quote the CR directly for definitions...

609.1. An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a spell or ability. When a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability resolves, it may create one or more one-shot or continuous effects. Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. Text itself is never an effect.

...but I don't think it's actually that hard to get intuitively. It's just something you might not think about while you're playing, but what you do in ordinary gameplay is just paying costs to get effects (plus combat). Spells that require additional costs even use the word "cost" in the additional cost itself: "As an additional cost to cast this spell, (whatever)."

See when I say I always fail when trying something that's outside the box? This is a perfect example. Having you use collect evidence as an effect felt like a genius idea to me, and almost an auto-include in the challenges. I was excited to do it, it felt very original to me, and it was kind of the point of the round to me. I even thought about making it the Main Challenge at first, then I thought it was better as a Subchallenge, but there was no point in time while planning this month that this challenge wasn't there. I also crafted both modes in Subchallenge 2 around that. Now it has suddenly become yet another failure... Leo, you need to stay inside the box! That's where your strenght lies, and you know it. Stop trying to be original! What else must happen for you to get that? Anyway, did you want an article topic? There's one! Add it to the list. Thanks, inner self... Don't worry, this is normal. On a totally unrelated note, I'm going to write about Kim in the DCC right now...

I'll be honest: I'm not going to change the challenge. I mostly built the whole round around this idea. What I can do and I'm willing to do is to tell you, any player, whether the way you're using collect evidence counts or not as an effect, aka whether it passes the Subchallenge or not. Feel free to ask me either here or via pm.

For example, @marioguy3's current submission uses collect evidence as a trigger condition, and that's NOT an effect. It does NOT currently pass Subchallenge 1:

Oceanic Cleanup Machine
Artifact (Rare)
When Oceanic Cleanup Machine enters the battlefield, investigate for each Fish, Jellyfish, Merfolk, and Octopus cards in graveyards.
Whenever you collect evidence 4, mill two cards.
, Sacrifice three clues: Return Oceanic Cleanup from your graveyard to the battlefield.

@Caspernicus and @Komandon's submissions do use collect evidence as an effect and currently pass Subchallenge 1. No other players have submitted yet.

[Komandon]

@bravelion83 wow. Thank you. Originally I was going to word it like Evidence Examiner but at a different phase and the pay off different. (Was going to be a green card originally). So after I waited to post my draft to see others ask and see you clarify I just tried something else. Realize I have a pun. And made something better since the original would have failed too due to an old little used mechanic for subchallenge 2 that lore based can't work in green. Definitely would be original but not make sense and fit together in the color(s).

[bravelion83]

@Komandon You can still edit or even fully change your submission. I'm just saying that your submission as it is now does use collect evidence as an effect and thus would pass Subchallenge 1 if the round ended right now. That's the only thing I'm saying. There is still the rest of the challenges and the rest of the rubric, and I'm not saying anything about those until the design deadline. For the record, this is what I see now as your current submission:

Sherlock Bones 2B
Legendary Creature — Skeleton Detective (rare)
Sherlock Bones enters the battlefield tapped and mill three cards.
At the beginning of your precombat main phase, collect evidence X or less, where X is Sherlock Bone's power.
Whenever three or more nonland cards left your graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on Sherlock Bones and investigate. This ability triggers only once each turn.
Sacrifice three Clues: Return Sherlock Bones from your graveyard to the battlefield.
2/2

Here collect evidence is indeed an effect. That's all I'm saying.

[haywire]

@bravelion83 since the existing CR for Collect Evidence only provides support for how it is done as an optional use, e.g. 701.57b/c, how do we interpret its use as a mandatory effect? For example, if my card says "Target opponent collects evidence 6", and they only have a 3 drop and 2 lands in their yard, do they exile everything? Or only the 3 drop, since the lands don't provide any progress towards collecting evidence so they don't fall under "Does as much as it can" rules of thumb?

I'm asking because it feels like, similarly to the prowess counters in my previous rounds, while an extremely simple change to the CR, it would still require a change/additional bullet to cover the use of collect evidence in the non-optional scenario, which, by the rubric, would lose points.

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 since the existing CR for Collect Evidence only provides support for how it is done as an optional use, e.g. 701.57b/c, how do we interpret its use as a mandatory effect? For example, if my card says "Target opponent collects evidence 6", and they only have a 3 drop and 2 lands in their yard, do they exile everything? Or only the 3 drop, since the lands don't provide any progress towards collecting evidence so they don't fall under "Does as much as it can" rules of thumb?

I'm asking because it feels like, similarly to the prowess counters in my previous rounds, while an extremely simple change to the CR, it would still require a change/additional bullet to cover the use of collect evidence in the non-optional scenario, which, by the rubric, would lose points.

701.57a To "collect evidence N" means to exile any number of cards from your graveyard with total mana value N or greater.

As I interpret it, exiling only the 3-drop would be enough to "do as much as it can", as you are exiling "any number" (1) of cards with total mana value as close to 6 as you can. Though, "any number" also includes 2 and 3, so it still would be legal for them to also exile one or both lands in addition to the 3-drop. It's still "any number" of cards and the total mana value is still as close to 6 as possible. In the case you proposed, I'd say that them exiling the 3-drop is the minimum requirement and would be enough. They MUST exile their 3-drop, but if they want they CAN also exile one or both lands. All of those would be legal choices for your opponent, and they would get to choose which one to do, not you.

As a counterexample, suppose that instead of the 3-drop your opponent has a 4-drop and a 1-drop plus whatever number of lands in their graveyard. In this case, exiling only the 4-drop or only the 1-drop would not be doing "as much as it can", so they would not be legal choices for your opponent. In this case, they are forced to exile both the 4-drop and the 1-drop (plus any of the lands if they want, including none) to do "as much as it can".

@Subject16

Alibi Extractor 2BB
Creature — Demon Detective (M)
Flying, trample
Pay 2 life: Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a Clue, each opponent loses 2 life unless they collect evidence 2. (To collect evidence 2, that player exiles cards with total mana value 2 or greater from their graveyard.)
4/5

Here collect evidence is a cost. See my previous post about "unless" meaning "you may COST. If you do, EFFECT." This submission as is would NOT pass Subchallenge 1.

Hope this helps. I'm going to update the clarifications adding examples.

EDIT - Done. I've added a bunch of examples in the clarifications spoiler. Hopefully I've covered all cases, or at least the majority. Let me know if there are any I didn't include.

[haywire]

@bravelion83 you said that no card in the set meets subchallenge 1, but how does Evidence Examiner not do so? Its first ability, as far as I can tell isn't a cost. It's an ability with a trigger condition, and then the effect is to collect evidence. Furthermore, if that doesn't qualify, then how does your example of "At the beginning of your upkeep, you collect evidence 6 and gain 3 life" differ?

As far as I understand, there's only 2 differences. 1. Evidence Examiner has a may, while your example does not, but I can't see why that changes anything, as there are plenty of effects with mays in the game that are nonetheless effects, and 2. your example has a second part to the effect, but evidence examiner doesn't. However, I still don't see how that turns evidence examiner into not an effect.

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 you said that no card in the set meets subchallenge 1, but how does Evidence Examiner not do so?

You're correct, I just missed it. On that card, collect evidence is an effect. It's also a good precedent to show that I wasn't too crazy making it a Subchallenge, Wizards did it themselves! I'll edit the clarifications. Thanks for making me notice.

EDIT - It's not the only one. Surveillance Monitor is the other, but I checked and they are the only two existing cards from MKM that would pass Subchallenge 1. Updating the clarifications again.

[Subject16]

@bravelion83 I've made an edit to my submission. Can you confirm that it now meets the criteria for the subchallenge?

[bravelion83]

@bravelion83 I've made an edit to my submission. Can you confirm that it now meets the criteria for the subchallenge?

Alibi Extractor 2BB
Creature — Demon Detective (M)
Flying, trample
Pay 2 life: Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with "2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.")
Whenever you sacrifice a Clue, each opponent collects evidence 2. If they can't, they lose 2 life. (To collect evidence 2, that player exiles cards with total mana value 2 or greater from their graveyard.)
4/5

@Subject16 Here collect evidence is indeed an effect (of a triggered ability). This submission WOULD pass Subchallenge 1.

Burn Your Source 1RR
Sorcery {R}
Sacrifice each Clue you control. Burn Your Source deals X damage to target opponent and up to one target creature they control, where X is the number of Clues sacrificed this way. That opponent collects evidence X, then you may cast a spell exiled this way without paying its mana cost.
Chase a Risky Lead — 1R, Reveal Burn Your Source from your hand: Investigate. Burn Your Source deals 2 damage to you. Activate only as a sorcery.
A good detective never gives up their sources. But if you do, make sure you do it spectacularly.

@haywire Here too collect evidence is an effect (of a spell ability), so this submission as it currently is WOULD also pass Subchallenge 1.

Case of the Meticulously Framed W
Enchantment - Case (Rare)
When this Case enters the battlefield, exile target creature until this Case leaves the battlefield. If you can't, sacrifice this Case.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may collect evidence 4. If you do, investigate. If you don't, sacrifice this Case.
To solve — You control three or more Clues.
Solved — Sacrifice this Case: Put the exiled creature into its owner's graveyard.

@netn10 Here collect evidence is a cost (that you may pay to investigate, that's an effect). This submission as is does NOT pass Subchallenge 1.

As a reference, here is the definition of a cost:

118.1. A cost is an action or payment necessary to take another action or to stop another action from taking place. To pay a cost, a player carries out the instructions specified by the spell, ability, or effect that contains that cost.

And here is that of effect:

609.1. An effect is something that happens in the game as a result of a spell or ability. When a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability resolves, it may create one or more one-shot or continuous effects. Static abilities may create one or more continuous effects. Text itself is never an effect.

EDIT March 13th 10:30 pm CET - I've just seen that netn10 has edited their submission, and I can say that the edited submission DOES pass Subchallenge 1. I have also seen AnotherAlias's submission, but there is nothing to say there as they, as it's always a player's right to do, chose to give up that Subchallenge and didn't use collect evidence at all. That's also a perfectly valid choice.