Board 8 > Magic: the Gathering Topic: Beware the Chupacabra

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sceptilesolar posted...

The thing about transform is that there's no consistency in what makes a card transform and how it transforms, so it's very difficult to build around the mechanic of transform. There are actually two cards from Shadows block that care about transforming itself, but that's about all you can do.

I actually agree with this-- but I'm just saying the practice tends to not work that way. Like you end up building around transform conditions of cards in your deck even if in theory it's possible to make transform conditions that don't require you to build around em.

Morph on the other hand, most of them are very functional if you just ignore the morph ability entirely. There are some build around elements to morph. Morph obviously gains benefit from being paired with other morph cards for deception reasons. And particularly in the first set it appeared you had some creatures that had cards that specifically wanted to abuse the morph ability, but I still wouldn't in the grand scheme of things call it a particularly linear mechanic.
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I sorta knew what he wanted when I saw the question, but I don't think white having better removal really has any causal connection to green getting the better creatures, they just come from the same source, which is that the color pie says that's how it works. I think my answer of 'it's always been that way' is still wrong but I sort of still feel that it has some merit.

That's how I feel about the myriad+battalion question too. I think Maro really wanted me to pick that answer since the prompt specifies multiplayer, but I think that the interaction isn't that confusing. It doesn't work. Once you learn that there is no interaction, it's fine. Whereas miracle is always a bad, confusing mechanic and drawing not on your draw phase just makes it worse. It's more of a stubborn answer where I'm hoping Maro is able to convince me better in his article but suspecting that he won't be able to.

EDIT: And despite what Maro said at one point, I think morph is not that linear still. It's much less linear than the three other options. But transform is a step even beyond that.
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Cycling + miracle just lets miracle come up more often. If you know how miracle works to begin with I don't think that interaction makes anything more complicated.

Whereas myriad + battalion you can know how myriad works and you can know how battalion works and odds are unless you remember "there is no interaction" because you read it somewhere you're probably going to have to look it up.
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Sceptilesolar posted...

I don't think white having better removal really has any causal connection to green getting the better creatures, they just come from the same source, which is that the color pie says that's how it works..

I mean, the reason the colour pie works that way from a design rather than flavour perspective is that theoretically green can handle the other colours creatures in combat. If as white, your have more removal, you "need" creatures that win in combat less and vice-versa, if your creatures can't win combat, you need to interact with creatures outside of combat.
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Hopefully we find out today.
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I think he's going to do an article about the essay first.
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I want to go to sleep for like eighteen hours. The anticipation for these test results is killing me.
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For some reason I also feel invested, even though I'm really dubious as to whether I would take a designer position if I won. I just want to participate I guess.

I hope the design challenges get revealed publicly so I can play along even if I don't make it.
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Yeah I'm invested just because I joined this contest to do the next round. Multiple choice and essays aren't exactly fun-- next round on seems like it could be. I guess I'd probably give the internship a crack if I won cause why not but I figure as long as I make the next round I won't be disappointed.

I still kinda like my chances to do well despite my 1 point handicap due to misreading the Mysterio question but yeah I am a bit anxious.
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Someone on the subreddit estimated a cutoff at 72 correct, which I'm not favored to make but is possible. If it's 71 I feel good about my chances. But it's going to be tight.
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https://twitter.com/maro254/status/958146740313444352?s=17

the cut-off is 73

yikes
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Oh jesus.
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I'm out then for sure. Oh well.
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Oof

So I need to get 73/74

That'll likely be it for me then!
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I think it's possible I got 73

so I probably got 72
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sounds like this quiz was too easy if that many people did that well!
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Think it's less it was too easy and more that they asked too many questions that were answered directly by MtG design articles (and/or previous tests) and it became more of a test about rote memorization rather than actually understanding game concepts.

Which I mean maybe that's what they want and it'll make the field the best yet but it doesn't seem optimal to me.
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Good lord.

Well, at least they'll end up with some very qualified interns!

In the age of kickstarter, tabletop simulator and easy access to professional piece printing, I don't feel so bad for the unchosen genius developers
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Just got my denial letter. Oh well.
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Same, wish I could keep playing but I'll get over it pretty quickly.
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There is always GDS4
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Congratulations!

You have passed the second trial of The Great Designer Search 3. That means it's now time to take the third trial, the design test.


board 8 is still in this
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good job

hopefully the design test involves designing existing cards as tomatoes
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I've been following this, and I'm curious, how long does it usually take them to release the answer key for this thing? After the whole process is done?
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Good job mooglekupo. I didn't make it.

Wish they'd told me what my score was!
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All right Moogle! Kick some ass!
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Reddit seems to have worked out the answer key by comparing successful answers. Based on that I was right in thinking I got 71 right and the right answers for the ones I missed.
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Emeraldegg posted...

I've been following this, and I'm curious, how long does it usually take them to release the answer key for this thing? After the whole process is done?

I think Mark Rosewater is going to have an article with the answers the Monday after next

people on Reddit have pretty well narrowed down the answers at this point based on the answers of people who passed.

It looks like I got the Commander deck question and Llanowar Elves wrong.
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The only one I'm really interested in is the UR artifact matters question about how they would change it, because I've never seen anything close to an ironclad answer. I don't think it's strange to have it use a fixed number but I also don't see why that's more compelling than really anything else.
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Sceptilesolar posted...

I don't think it's strange to have it use a fixed number but I also don't see why that's more compelling than really anything else.

I just think it's really weak if not flat because you're paying 2 mana to do it, and getting a really token effect unless it's like 3+ mana cost. Like the idea behind it is you want to be able to sacrifice your garbage to get something decent. Not sacrifice stuff you've invested into.
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Anyway looking like I also got 71/75

I got
Pacifism (said the 6/6 for 6-- this is likely due to the lion's share of my limited experience being from older sets where it absolutely is better than Pacifism because the creature power scale is low)
10/10 (I said 8/8 since I felt they were both infeasible to reliably cast and you could maybe gimmick the 10/10 into play)
Mysterio added ability (explained in topic)
Commander Deck (said theme)
Wrong

I was kicking myself for the first two even though I think the questions were stupid because it actually heavily depends on the limited set in question. Overall I think I should've qualified because I got pretty much all the hard questions right and blundered on dumb ones. Oh well!
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Er actually 70/75 because I said Morph and not Transform because I misremembered the question (still think they're the ones that are wrong on that one and it's just a "do you read the design articles" check rather than something that was properly thought about)

Well now I actually feel better because even if I'd gotten the dumb limited questions right I wouldn't have got it
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I assume all the questions were written with modern set design in mind, and Pacificm has been a better pick than a 6/6 for 6 for a long time, regardless of the set.
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Designers spend a lot of time making and testing Limited environments so I thought that was a good part to focus on.
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I think questions on limited environments are good

I think asking about a specific set and picking 5 cards from the set would've been better though
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Thinking about the artifact matters question again, my issue with it is basically that I think the answers might be badly chosen. The structure of the problem is fundamentally that there are five answers that all have a hidden probability to them and that you have to determine which one has the greatest. I think that to make that work, you'd either want it so one answer will happen 100% of the time and the others have less than 100%, or you'd want four answers to happen 0% of the time and the other to have more than 0%.

But I don't think either applies here. You end up having to estimate kind of off the cuff and hope you share the questioner's estimation. If you're choosing between like 80% and 50% and 30% it's kind of hard to make those distinctions unless your thought process is very close to the questioner's.

So either the question is really high-level, there's something I missed, or it was stupid.
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Glancing at the question, my initial reaction is actually adding the ability to drop a card from your hand on the battlefield. The other 4 are minor incremental changes, which tends to be a development thing than a design thing.
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UltimaterializerX posted...

On a long enough time line, I will ALWAYS be proven right.

didn't read the rest of your post, but a broken clock is right twice a day!
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>Claims to have quit community
>Reposts thread from Magic subreddit to Magic discussion topic in order to argue about it
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Best part is that the top comment explains in detail why we can't let this happen, but that's too much for Ulti to bother reading when he could be getting his rage-high.
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MoogleKupo141 posted...

Congratulations!

You have passed the second trial of The Great Designer Search 3. That means it's now time to take the third trial, the design test.


board 8 is still in this

this is awesome!

hopefully the design round will be open again so we can see/you can talk about what's going on
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It's not, unfortunately. Design round needs to be kept secret until after it's over, same as the quiz.
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It's a professional level event. At the highest level of play, you can't do anything but treat the rules as sacrosanct. Anything else would invite accusations of favoritism.
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The reason we have to be so draconian about this -- and I hate it, too -- is strictly legal.

Same thing with gambling/betting/randomly determining a winner. We already toe the line about Magic being a game of skill vs. a game of chance, the latter of which would put us into vice-tax territory. That's why we never have big tournaments in Germany; Germany considers Magic to be the same as a casino game.
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"Rather than a "joke", it was a genuine attempt at bribery, and the person who attempted the bribe was caught by later being overheard complaining that OP didn't accept the bribe."
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The Mana Sword posted...

is actually adding the ability to drop a card from your hand on the battlefield

That would be broken as hell though.
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Oh it definitely would be, but broken-ness isnt really designs concern.

I dont know what the actual answer to the question, but like I said, that option is a change design would make, the others are ones development would probably make.
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Are they really different? I felt like these were the same department at MtG. I mean there are a lot of other questions on the test like "should we reprint Lightning Bolt or Llanowar Elves" that seem to be about looking at brokenness.
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