The reasoning for the 0 is this - since other auction cards force you to bid life, there becomes a cutoff point where you have to stop - that is, your life total. If you ever go beyond that, your opponents stop, and let you die at the next SBA check. Your card creates a situation where if it ever passes a cutoff point, you CANNOT stop bidding because you'll instantly lose. Going back to your argument of "shocking a x/3 with no follow up" - you're right. There is no reason not to open the bidding with a lethal amount of damage, to where if the bidding ever stops they're either dead or left with no board. And there's no way you can defend a 5-mana "target player loses the game" being balanced whatsoever. That's the logic behind that 0.
You can stop bidding just fine. Players only lose life based on the number of permanents sacrificed. If they bid a million permanents and win but only sacrifice 6 permanents, each opponent will only lose 6 life. Lava axe is a five mana "you lose the game" if your opponent is at 5 or less life. This is only a 5 mana "you lose the game" if youre life is greater than the number of permanents they control and you have the permanents to force them to bid in a lose/lose situation. This is even more complicated in multiplayer/commander with greater life totals and multiple opponents. Compare it to things like Devouring Greed power level wise. Your evaluation is off. It's that simple.
Well, it wouldn't be wrong to cast it and produce a draw if you were behind -- in fact, it would be a positive EV choice. I'm not really trying to justify his choice of a 0 (I certainly have my own quibbles with his grading, as noted above), but I do think that a card that produces draws, say, 10% of the time it's cast would produce huge problems for organized play if it were a viable card, to the point that I think WOTC would never print such a card.
The rubric asks the consider casual and multiplayer formats as well, not just organized play. Their are formats besides standard where it could be printed without that concern.
Anyway, I want justification from the judge, not from a competitor.
I imagine the problem that they were pointing out is that the card would produce a ton of draws.
It would only produce a ton of draws if you cast it when it can produce a draw. In which case you're doing it wrong. Like casting a shock on a three toughness creature with no follow up play. Is it as obvious of a misplay as my shock example? Certainly not. But again, my point here is that the balance of my entry does not warrant a 0. The rubric on how you evaluate balance makes it quite clear that it's not a reasonable ruling.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't my favorite design ever. In fact, I knew it was a risky a design with obvious flaws (none of which that have been pointed out thus far I didn't consider beforehand) and didn't expect it win with the MCC Rubric how it is. Still, I'd like it to be evaluated as the rubric outlines, which I think a 0 is hard to justify here.
Balance: 0/3 - This card can't function as intended. In the case of the other auction cards you are forced to pay life, so you can bid more than you have if you like, you just lose the game before you can do anything with the auction you won. With permanents, there's no restriction on how high you can go because the game will only make you do as much as you can - you can't sacrifice more permanents than you control, but you can bid to do exactly that, and if two players know that the bidding will just...never stop.
Pain's Reward allows you to bid more life that what you have, and technically people can just bid infinitely on that too. Yes if you overbid on that, it will (usually) just kill you. But that's the point. In this case, you would just sac all your permanents instead, effectively killing you/removing you from the game. So the card does function as intended. If you want to criticize that an opponent can always take the effect of the spell by overbidding you into calculating it's balance, of course you should. But it just means that you, as the caster, would want to cast it when the life lost wouldn't kill you and then let them win the bid to lose all their permanents.
The psuedo-unblockable ability that Thorn Elemental has is pretty strictly green, so making it in green/red is a pretty large bend. uncommon is viable for that ability, but this could ALMOST be a common for power.
I'm not going to nitpick some of your other points, but while the Thorn Elemental ability is green, my card also has fire breathing, so of course it's going to be both green and red. That's the classic example of how multicolor cards work. I really don't understand your argument.
Also, I've noticed a general trend lately with judges scoring Uniqueness. There have been a lot of french vanilla cards getting full points or 2.5s simply on the fact that the combination of keywords "hasn't been done before". A big part of what uniqueness is supposed to be about is creativity and exploring design space. It doesn't make sense to give cards like that full points and the rubric was written to penalize french vanilla cards in this specific section. So let's work on that. I know several judges these days were not involved in writing or the edits to rubric, but the points you're supposed to consider are all there.
It was a factor of course but I had other reasons for using the clause that way. I'll explain my thought process after judging because I don't like to influence card evaluation . I feel it's important to let a card be judged without commentary because that's how a player would be introduced to a card. I only take the time to point out things that I see as objectively incorrect.
No, I got distracted with some car trouble yesterday and lost track of time. If you'll allow an extension for all of us, I'll have something today after work. If not, I understand being disqualified. I've just been busier than normal.
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NVM, didn't see the contest thread. No worries, best of luck to everyone else.
I only deducted a half point for a reason. I'm not looking to overly penalize cards that take risk and push the boundaries of the rules, but it's important to understand where a card currently "breaks" the game. The instance here with Gerrard Mom's card felt fairly narrow in stepping out of bounds and I judged according.
Since you've brought this discussion out here, I'll go over my research and review of your question. The two cards that I've used as a point of comparison are Grusilda, Monster Masher and The Scarab God.
Grusilda puts to monsters together, and in the unstable FAQ, it was ruled that if two CDAs (characteristic defining abilities) for a creatures p/t existed, both would be counted separately then added together. The Scarab God is a copy effect, but ruling on it make it clear that even if the token it creates copies a CDA, it would still have a P/T of 4/4. These were the the points of reference I felt were closest. That said, there is still some grey area here. Weatherlight reforged isn't copying a creature like the scarab god, and it already has a base P/T unlike in your example of using Tarmogoyf and Crusader or Odric.
When asking others, I was also told to look at rule 604.3a which says that an ability "conveys information about an object's characteristics that would normally be found elsewhere on that object (such as in its ... power/toughness box) or overrides information found elsewhere on that object.". I feel that a possible ruling would be that Tarmogoyf and Odric P/T characteristic defining abilities would be calculated separately, combined, and then override the Weatherlights base P/T. But I'm not sure.
This area seems grey, and the rules to make it work so far have only been discussed in un sets, so I decided to go back and deduct an additional half point to the cards viability. However, Viability also considers the cards color and rarity, so at most I'd only take off a single point if a card "did not work within the current rules" so long as that rules error/mistake didn't leak into other categories, which here I felt it didn't or otherwise was so minor a leak it wasn't worth noting.
Im used to it being an option to do two card challenges for the finals, since at most you should have four players to judge. It's a pity that someone elses mistake would limit that.
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You can stop bidding just fine. Players only lose life based on the number of permanents sacrificed. If they bid a million permanents and win but only sacrifice 6 permanents, each opponent will only lose 6 life. Lava axe is a five mana "you lose the game" if your opponent is at 5 or less life. This is only a 5 mana "you lose the game" if youre life is greater than the number of permanents they control and you have the permanents to force them to bid in a lose/lose situation. This is even more complicated in multiplayer/commander with greater life totals and multiple opponents. Compare it to things like Devouring Greed power level wise. Your evaluation is off. It's that simple.
Anyway, I want justification from the judge, not from a competitor.
It would only produce a ton of draws if you cast it when it can produce a draw. In which case you're doing it wrong. Like casting a shock on a three toughness creature with no follow up play. Is it as obvious of a misplay as my shock example? Certainly not. But again, my point here is that the balance of my entry does not warrant a 0. The rubric on how you evaluate balance makes it quite clear that it's not a reasonable ruling.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't my favorite design ever. In fact, I knew it was a risky a design with obvious flaws (none of which that have been pointed out thus far I didn't consider beforehand) and didn't expect it win with the MCC Rubric how it is. Still, I'd like it to be evaluated as the rubric outlines, which I think a 0 is hard to justify here.
Pain's Reward allows you to bid more life that what you have, and technically people can just bid infinitely on that too. Yes if you overbid on that, it will (usually) just kill you. But that's the point. In this case, you would just sac all your permanents instead, effectively killing you/removing you from the game. So the card does function as intended. If you want to criticize that an opponent can always take the effect of the spell by overbidding you into calculating it's balance, of course you should. But it just means that you, as the caster, would want to cast it when the life lost wouldn't kill you and then let them win the bid to lose all their permanents.
Your argument here does not warrant a score of 0.
I'm not going to nitpick some of your other points, but while the Thorn Elemental ability is green, my card also has fire breathing, so of course it's going to be both green and red. That's the classic example of how multicolor cards work. I really don't understand your argument.
Also, I've noticed a general trend lately with judges scoring Uniqueness. There have been a lot of french vanilla cards getting full points or 2.5s simply on the fact that the combination of keywords "hasn't been done before". A big part of what uniqueness is supposed to be about is creativity and exploring design space. It doesn't make sense to give cards like that full points and the rubric was written to penalize french vanilla cards in this specific section. So let's work on that. I know several judges these days were not involved in writing or the edits to rubric, but the points you're supposed to consider are all there.
this is objectively false.
I had looked for it a couple times and somehow missed it
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NVM, didn't see the contest thread. No worries, best of luck to everyone else.
I only deducted a half point for a reason. I'm not looking to overly penalize cards that take risk and push the boundaries of the rules, but it's important to understand where a card currently "breaks" the game. The instance here with Gerrard Mom's card felt fairly narrow in stepping out of bounds and I judged according.
Grusilda puts to monsters together, and in the unstable FAQ, it was ruled that if two CDAs (characteristic defining abilities) for a creatures p/t existed, both would be counted separately then added together. The Scarab God is a copy effect, but ruling on it make it clear that even if the token it creates copies a CDA, it would still have a P/T of 4/4. These were the the points of reference I felt were closest. That said, there is still some grey area here. Weatherlight reforged isn't copying a creature like the scarab god, and it already has a base P/T unlike in your example of using Tarmogoyf and Crusader or Odric.
When asking others, I was also told to look at rule 604.3a which says that an ability "conveys information about an object's characteristics that would normally be found elsewhere on that object (such as in its ... power/toughness box) or overrides information found elsewhere on that object.". I feel that a possible ruling would be that Tarmogoyf and Odric P/T characteristic defining abilities would be calculated separately, combined, and then override the Weatherlights base P/T. But I'm not sure.
This area seems grey, and the rules to make it work so far have only been discussed in un sets, so I decided to go back and deduct an additional half point to the cards viability. However, Viability also considers the cards color and rarity, so at most I'd only take off a single point if a card "did not work within the current rules" so long as that rules error/mistake didn't leak into other categories, which here I felt it didn't or otherwise was so minor a leak it wasn't worth noting.