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[RESULTS] Work of Art: The HALF-Great Designer Search 3 — Challenge 5
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Thank you to all participants! Little disclaimer: I got good news at my work yesterday (I received a grant) which is going to keep me busy until Tuesday. This means that the results will likely be delayed to next week-end unfortunately, sorry for the inconvenience
Congratulations, dude!
Yes, a research grant, I got funded for an additional year of PhD =D I'm in the field of neurobiology, I study the impact of stress on the brain ^^
How goes it?
No rush, though I do love seeing the results on these, I just wondered if you'd had anytime to look more carefully at the submissions and whether your task of judging was feeling easier or harder of late.
You'll find below the overall review of each entry, sometimes followed by one of these little medals:
ORIGINALITY MEDAL — Your cards did something mechanically novel.
FLAVOUR MEDAL — Your cards captured the flavour essence of the illustration.
REALISM MEDAL — Your cards looked like they could be printed without change.
ELEGANCE MEDAL — Your cards had clever details about them.
*DING* — You get a *DING* whenever you break one of the contest rules.
@KorandAngels
The cards did a good job at mechanically representing the illustrations you chose, but the Spikes/Johnny/Timmy restrictions did not match very well. There were some interesting concepts exploring some new design space, but the balance of the card was a bit shaky and the entry in general was lacking polish.
@sanjaya666
The entry felt really well-crafted with a lot of elegant and surprising variations. There are some balancing issues here and there but the top-down flavour complemented the illustration really well, and the cards would mostly please their target audience.
@Ranshi922
This was mostly a clean entry but with a few balance issues here and there. There was not a lot of new and original abilities, but there was some interesting variations on staples. The flavour and colours of the illustrations was also well-respected.
@Undead
A very elegant entry with overall a nice balance and some really original concepts. The cards mostly fit in their restrictions though there were a couple rarity issues, I think. The top-down flavour was well incorporated, I especially liked that all your cards had flavour text which allowed for original interpretations of the illustrations.
@LyndonF
It was a clean and simple entry, with a couple of interesting propositions though not the most original overall. I think the balance was a bit questionable from time to time, but nothing out of the impossible, I would say. Interestingly, I think the cards became better and better as we went higher in rarities with that entry.
@bnew07
A very solid entry with great balancing and top-down designs. Because you often go down the most efficient and clean way of interpreting the illustration, it wasn’t super original though, if we except the Johnny/Jenny enchantment which brought exactly that sense of unexpected you would expect. I do think that it was the entry that made the best use of flavour text to tie the rules text with the illustration and name.
@Faiths_Guide
There was a lot of elegance in this entry, it didn’t try to create really novel effects but it introduced clever variations over well-known staples in many ways. The mechanic and flavour aspects tied well into the chosen illustrations. I do think there were some questionable choices in the lower rarity designs though, but it’s still a solid entry.
@Project1734
There were some very original concepts in there, but the execution was really messy and most cards wouldn’t work without a considerable re-writing. On a lot of those cards, the problem was that the card was trying to do something fun, but it got completely lost because the card had overwhelming balance or rules issues that pulled the focus away from the fun part.
@DomriKade
There were some really interesting concepts in this entry, but I’m not 100% on board with their balancing. I think all but the uncommon card were either too weak or too strong. Still, if I get past the numbers where I don’t always agree, I liked most of the core ideas that were proposed. I also really liked the snappy one-line flavour texts, they were all pretty clever.
I was very worried that this challenge was going to crush people because of how technical it is, but I have to say you all absolutely nailed it. Which made my task very hard because when a lot of people have really good entries it's especially difficult to pick only the few best ones out of the pack x) As tradition now demands, I completely ignored the Top 3 I initially announced so I could get as many people as I saw fit on the podium, so here's another Top 4:
@sanjaya666 It's not the first round that you're part of the potential candidates for the podium, so I'm really glad I could finally give you a ranking
@Undead I found your entry to be full of clever ideas! You really embraced the Top-Down aspects in the details with things like the Fox Spirit token on your rare, the sequence of 3s on your common etc. I think you scrambled the rarity a little, but the core ideas of the card were still realistic concepts with a few tweaks on the numbers.
@Faiths_Guide Once again, you gave me a really hard time as you were elbow-to-elbow in the competition for the first place. Your entry was all about the clever variations, it was a lot of spells that felt familiar but still were clearly new and unique. I preferred your white and black spell and considered you tied on the green one with the winner. The final decision was really about small details like flavour texts and development numbers.
@bnew07 I believe you just became the first participant of the Half-GDS to have won two first places, congratulations! As I was saying to Faiths_Guide, it was going to be either one of you and it was a really tough choice. Your entry was probably the most realistic of the contest, and also used flavour text in a very unique way. I preferred your blue and red spell and considered you tied for the green one compared to your closest runner-up. I think you had just one more sparkle of polish in your entry which made it, in my opinion, the best of this round
___
Congratulations everyone who entered! The quality of the entries for this round was really off the roof which made for a very steep competition ^^ I was super impressed, honestly, I'm not sure I would have ended up on the podium myself if I had tried x)
As usual, I adjusted the prices accordingly to the Top 4 composition:
- @bnew07 — Which 5 cards of your choice do you want me to favourite?
- @Faiths_Guide — Which 3 cards of your choice do you want me to favourite?
- @Undead — Which 2 cards of your choice do you want me to favourite?
- @sanjaya666 — Which 1 card of your choice do you want me to favourite?
There is one final challenge coming, and it is no spoiler that to say it's the longest, and maybe the most difficult of them all. For those interested, stay tuned tomorrow for the special 3-weeks final challenge "Pack & Play" =D
Here it is boss:
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/lisa-and-elia-twilightborn?list=user
So, much thanks for acknowledging the cards of mine and, good luck!
Favourited! ^^
The reason I made the White common that way was to make it difficult in the mid game for your opponents to swing in, even with bigger creatures. The Lure stops it from dealing the damage it intends and allows your other creatures to block (or double or triple block) and kill it, which seemed very fitting for the art too. White loves to flood the board which could make the token super useful.
Could you favorite the ones you like best from my submission? Thanks again!
Congrats other @Winners!
https://mtgcardsmith.com/view/zulchaz-pale-acolyte-of-ugin
Great contest. Could you favourite these two? Thanks.
Oh I didn't even noticed but yes, I think you're the only one that never got below second place! I'm not surprised, your entries are always super solid, even when you ended up second like this round you were usually a very serious candidate to first place ^^
I favourited Unmaking Flame, Defecting Terrain and Mortality Angel
@Undead
Favourited!
That’s so cool. Thanks so much!