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Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-07 17:37:23)
| Conversation: Cardlist | Visual spoiler | Export | Booster | Comments | Search | Recent activity |
| Mechanics |
Recent updates to Conversation: (Generated at 2025-07-07 17:37:23)
white / blue hybrid
The Question itself is misleading. In multicolor set, these creatures seems baseline, expected.
No emails yet, expected some time "in the morning" california time (6am was the time they sent out the other email, but if they need to do stuff manually, it might not be till noon).
However on tumblr, Mark describes making the decisions on Mon http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/170286279953/info-on-the-gds3-multiple-choice-test
3,085 people took the test. Three people got perfect scores. The cutoff ended up being 73 (of 75) in order to include approximately 100 people.
OK, that's a little higher than I expected but given the number of entrants I'm not surprised it was very high. I'm pretty sure I don't make the cut, there's two questions I got wrong, and I'm fairly sure there's at least one or two more. On GA, it looked like Jay got 74 so he's hopefully through. I don't know about anyone else.
Good luck anyone still hoping!
ETA: I'm fairly happy with how I did. I think I could have improved my score slightly with another round of thorough checking but since I was not really planning to succeed beyond the third round even in the best possible outcome, I don't think it would have been worth the considerable extra effort. I have learned more about how to take tests I'm serious about -- the main takeaway for me was recognise which questions I tend to be bad at and give them an extra separate round of checking imagining how people other than me are likely to answer them. And if I'm really really serious, to brainstorm the questions, asking "what might they be looking for" and "what might this be based on" to see if any relevant references emerge.
The question about, "We avoid doing two-colour creatures which could be done in a single colour. Which of these colour combinations is best for a 4/4 flying vigilance?"
I went back and forth a bit but after the first sentence, I felt they were clearly looking for BG, not WU.
I still think that's true, but after the test, I went fishing in gatherer and if so, the detractors seem to have a stronger case than the question itself.
In theory, WG creatures can have flying plus a green keyword. But they never do. Almost ever. The entire stable of GW flying seems to be: several cycles of angels or dragons where the whole cycle has flying; one planechase rare; three pre-modern cards. Vigilance doesn't arise, they don't seem to do GW flying at all. I think that's less than RG flying.
And conversely, flying vigilance creature are several WU and no BG.
Or did I screw up the search? I do that a lot. If so, disregard.
This does seem to be a "know what we say, not what we do" question (unless I'm wrong about the answer) :)
Favorite set: Ravnica block. Worst part was some guilds weren't as viable as others.
Least favorite set: Battle for Zendikar. Best part was colorless mana symbol.
Greatest strength: Rules text. The Golden Rule. "Whenever a card's text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence."
Greatest weakness: Cost. of packs, of building decks.
Change one thing about Magic: random packs.
magic nerrrrdssss
no but really i wish you specialty brand Lucc, extra effective ;D <3
nah i figgered it out, i was tired last nite and wasn't really thinking when making this card, feel free to delete it or whatever
I can't remember what I put for the question about play design. It was one of the ones I thought about for far too long. None of the answers were what I would have done. I sure hope I put "ask someone from play design," because there's what my gut tells me is right.
Ah, I see what you mean. I did go with ask as the answer, I felt they were fishing for it, but I wasn't really sure why. Your description makes sense. I was like, your ENTIRE JOB is to make cards play design likes, you can't always fob it off on them. But I guessed they wanted to make sure you ask sometimes.
I get the impression that the Play Design question was intended to be "What you should do" versus "What we really do."
It's one of those job interview questions like "An employee bad mouths the customers and makes snide remarks just when they get out of earshot. What do you do?" The 'correct' answer isn't the answer they're looking for.
I just went with Boros. I wasn't sure, but several of the other questions seemed to be too obvious to be worth asking, like which plane had lots of wolves, so I went with the obvious answer.
The red green or red blue one was a pain. The typo makes me suspect it was changed and might not be a kosher question. I went with red green based on intuition of what they wanted but I don't think it was clear.
I screwed up a couple of question by reading them wrong and caught most but not all before I submitted. It is a real pain that sometimes the card is wrong, but the mistake is something you'd just assume wasn't meant in a real card, but in the test you have to notice the "mistake"
I hated the play design question, I'm pretty sure they ask sometimes but not usually, and it's not clear which the question meant.
Likewise, does counterspell deck mean draw go, or blue control deck but not solely counterspell based? I guessed they were asking about the former but I think you can't tell from the question
On a separte sidenote: It's going to be real funny if Llanowar Elves is reprinted in the upcoming set 'Dominaria'...
Just looked at Jay Treat's answers. I'm pretty sure I got two wrong off the top. Straight up missed that the cloning card had an enters the battlefield ability, as opposed to using 'as'... which makes sense from a design point of view as well because you want reanimation to target something. How weird. This was a tough question if you didn't notice the 0/0 wasn't possible. Once it was impossible, however, it becomes obvious.
I also chose to make a card I wanted development to like be as strong as possible instead of asking for help. My thought was that development would cost the card fairly, and I didn't want that. But in retrospect, asking for help was clearly the right answer. I'll be kind of upset if I lose by choosing wrong on this one...
On the Lightning Bolt/Llanowar Elves split: I went with Elves. My only notes for this question was, "What a rough split." Tough.
There's a fair shot Wizards won't agree with me on a number of the other ones. The rarity questions, for example, are tough. I'm pretty sure the Threaten variant is an uncommon, but I could also see someone saying "Too many little parts. Can't be less than a rare." Shrug
The battlecry question drove me batty. The obvious answer was Boros. But then the "Why would they bother asking the question if it's in the same two colors" specter rose its head.
What makes it worse it that Battlecry makes sense philosophically in Gruul and Rakdos. ("Waarg! Attack!" for Gruul. "Let's gang up and get 'im!" for Rakdos.) It's... um... not a great flavor choice for Boros. I mean, they're the military police. Detain makes a lot more flavor sense for those guys (obviously not a red ability. But you get the idea.)
Battlecry, though, doesn't reall match mid-range, which is where Gruul sits. I only kept doubling back to it because I was torn between Boros and Rakdos. And while it works with Rakdos' small team of aggressive creatures, Rakdos is really a strategy of 50% creatures and 50% spells. You want a high concentration of creatures, like in Boros, for Battlcry to work.
The question didn't really specify philosophy versus gameplay. But I figured Boros edged out the other two when both were combined. Still... must have spent 15 minutes going back and forth.
Backstory?
Been here since september, and am looking for a bit of backstory for this website.
I felt that questions 4-6 were the most frustrating for me (though by all means, not the only tough questions.) For question 4, I felt that red-green and blue-red were almost equally valid choices. I can't even remember which one I picked, but I hope it was red-green. I felt that question five was difficult to answer because it depends so heavily on the environment. I think [I hope] I chose uncommon, especially since the card was multicolor. Then, I found 6 frustrating because it made me doubt my answer to question 4.
Ok, looking over jays answers on goblin artisans, I screwed up a couple of questions from reading badly and several rarity questions. I should have checked those better.
And a few were just ambiguous but I think I did the best I could have done. Interested to see which jmg meant.
Yeah. I felt they did better than before at making clear questions, and I mostly had an answer I was happy with, but there were some I felt i understood the situation but wasn't sure what was asked, and one or two where I gave the best answer I could but really couldn't tell between two answers.
And some I'm just not good at like rarity, I think I did the best I could checking them out on gatherer.
In general I felt i did well doing the best I could, not getting trapped in a dodgy answer, but researching on gatherer and in the articles and choosing uncertain answers based on what I thought was most likely to succeed. But that still leaves quite a few I'm likely to have wrong, plus I probably made at least some silly mistakes.
There was a set of three questions the drove me mad, and a couple of others I was less sure about than I would have liked.
Probably not. There's going to be a few which people split hairs over. I know one of those questions drove me mad.
By my count, I had six questions that really could have gone in one of two ways, and one that had a potential 3-way split. We'll have to compare notes tommorrow.
Some of these questions are rough.
I'll post which one tomorrow evening, but there's at least one that I feel has two equally valid answers. I must be missing something.
According to the rules, they're about 40% interested in the essays, 10% in the multiple choice, and 50% in stage 3
@Jack: Thanks Jack! Having not seen your essays I can't really comment on them. But I wouldn't be too down about them if you don't feel they were as good as you'd want them to be. I'm sure the judges are more interested in stage 3 anyway. That's what the work really curtails, after all.
@jmg: Oh yeah, very well written. Thanks for sharing.
I can be more realistic about my own essays. I think the content was solid. But I could have been a lot clearer (e.g. more specific examples like an example haunt card). I debated saying "be more progressive, doofuses" but went with something design-focussed instead, but now I somewhat regret that.
Just put my responses to the Great Designer Search 3 on my blog.
Yeah, Mark said it's just if you followed the rules. After all 3 are in they grade us
I'm glad you guys said something, though, because like the first email it was for some reason marked as read without me viewing it.
I have to assume that everyone who answers and stays within the word limit gets accepted for the second trial. There's no way to analyze the many essays in such a short time.