Where are the actual questions and the actual answers to go with them? I searched your article for a link, but could not find it. I took this test too, and I also plan to write something about it. To keep this in perspective, let's examine some of my answers for those you found confusing.
1 (C) black
Giving first strike an off-color activation cost (obviously in white or red) could be printed on a monoblue or monogreen creature.
2 (a) common
It's not tricky enough for rare or mythic, and if it was uncommon, the power+toughness would be greater than 3/1. It's likely a common vampire at 5 mana (4B), which is a black Ambush Party analogue. Even if I took this test again, I don't believe the correct answer is 'uncommon'. This common is a trash uncommon, and I'd never submit or print it at uncommon. Perhaps this means I'm not suitable as a designer for the current R&D.
3 (c) is not possible
I did not find questions 1-3 'linked' at all, as they each dealt with a different sphere of design.
5.) (e) sorcery discard
flash/shroud is blue/green
doublestrike is red/white
P/T switch is blue/red
T) gain two life is white/green or green/blue (selkie H. mage)
T) Discard at sorcery speed is black and nothing else... if it was also draw or had black mana on activation could be blue/black, if had punisher or draw/discard could be red/black
I don't see your point here. The question did exactly what it supposed to do, test a deep understanding of black vs. multicolor.
Question 6 -- yes, I completely agree this question was terrible if e was the correct answer.
15 (c)
not all demons fly so not A
demons are iconic but not for power/toughness
c) was likely in 2004, under modern design not so sure, since demons are iconic as the 'personificaiton of evil' and 'tempters' I think C is the most likely still
removing 'combat' is a step back so no D
upping power level to discard hand is not likely too powerful not E
I don't know what the 'answer' is as you did not include it, but this was my answer.
29) b (was my answer, was this the right one? you don't say)
Which of the following enchantments are we least likely to print?
a) All creatures with changeling have flying. not fully in theme, Levitation
b) All creatures with echo have deathtouch. --WTF
c) All creatures with exalted have lifelink. helpful in theme
d) All creatures with infect have first strike. helpful in theme
e) All creatures with landfall have haste. just as likely as A
40 (b) -- greater variety of game play, straight out of Rosewater's Kind Acts of Randomness article...
"Randomness is important because it creates surprises, makes the game play differently, and allows players to react." Randomness makes games more fun, more repeatable, and more skill-testing. Sounds awesome. Now we get to the tricky part of the discussion, the problem with randomness. Why wouldn't a game be filled to the brim with randomness? Because most gamers hate it.
Answer C is a downside... letting less skill player win is not an advantage. E is meh. D is wrong. A is the same as C restated.
It is interesting to note I read Rosewater's article on variance as part of answering this question and still got it wrong.
46 Devastating Summons (b)
Johnny asks 'what can I do with this?' he is excited by cards that open up possibilities. This means both Clone and Fauna Shaman are very Johnny. Johnny likes modular cards like Mortician Beetle which don't dictate a path and are open ended for many crazy comboes. Near Death Experience is a Johnny card because it is daring Johnny to come figure out and use it, create an experience around it. Devastating Summons is Johnny due to a hidden trick (you can tap land for mana before sac), but as tricks go, Johnny isn't a fan because it closes possibilities rather than open then. Summons is more spike, though I could see Johnny play it in Planar Birth with Plateaus and Sacred Foundries, etc... however that is a deck he'd only play once or twice before getting bored with it... too linear.
You shouldn't rant about 46. I mean it's easy to see Devastating Summons is far more 'spike' since it was a major tournament archetype for a couple months.
I'd like to sum this article critique by again asking for a link to where the real answers are posted.
I think Sanhedrin hit the nail on the head there. That was exactly my point. The multiple choice test was a poor metric for testing applicants, which is why the results for round 3 came back looking odd.
TwoHands you are exactly correct. I re-read the article this morning and was made that I made three grammar errors and two formatting errors. I wrote this over the course of two weeks and edited several parts over and over. I appreciate the consideration about how much work went into it. You are also correct in that I made a pretty big error in that I used myself as an example. Anyone who has written persuasive articles, or formal papers, knows that you're not supposed to use yourself as an example ever. I tried writing it without referencing myself, but then it seemed like it was lacking good examples. I even considered just quoting responses from the WotC message board, but that didn't sound right either. So I agree with you on that final part, that the article does fail from a perspective that people who read it can dismiss it as personal complaints. It appears as though several people who read this did just that.
Smack8001, you proved my point. This was used to screen candidates, but the screen doesn't filter out ALL the bad candidates. Its very nature allows for people to slip in that shouldn't be there. What would have been a better metric? Well, I already stated that in the article. They should have designed a thorough application and analysis test with short answers.
Lastly, to those that a crying "sour grapes," I am aware that this article CAN come off as that, as I explained in my answer to TwoHands. That is a fault of my own. I shouldn't have used myself as an example. It does not, however, change the nature of the test. If I had passed, I would still have these complaints. As it is, if we eliminated the questions with obvious flaws, I still would have gotten 8 or more wrong and still not passed. It's not an issue of whether or not I passed, because I wasn't going to pass either way. My goal in this article was to draw issue with, and point out the flaws of, this test. In fact, as much fun as I had writing answers to the Round 3 test (which I did just to see if I could do it), when I shared them with friends, they didn't really like them. So, I feel, even if I had made round 3, I probably would not be in the top 8. Of course, that's probably because I'm the only person that thinks an entire plane designed around Unglued/Unhinged would be a good idea. What can I say, it's the one thing MaRo and I agree on: our love of silver-bordered cards.
Well as you can probably tell from this article, I am a strong advocate of the anti-testing movement. Not sure where you are from, but there is a current craze in America to make everything dependent on standardized testing, which usually comes in the form of Multiple Choice tests. In answer to your question, here are some books that I enjoyed.
Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us
Understanding Dropouts: Statistics, Strategies, and High-Stakes Testing
Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics
If you have access to the ERIC database, you kind find hundreds of articles on this subject by typing "testing," or "high-stakes" into the search engine. I hope this got you interested in studying testing and test taking. It really is an interesting field.
Great deck idea. I love crazy johnny decks like this, they really are much more imaginitive and "fun" than the tier 1 decks that dominate the tournament scene. Just thought I'd throw some suggestions your way and my $0.02.
Why play white at all?
Why not cut the salvage scouts (since all they can really retrieve is your liquid metal coating anyway, and you're running it as a 4 of.) and the kor sanctifiers, and run Acidic Slime an extra manic vandal, an extra shatter, and an extra naturalize instead?
This will free up your mana base and actually give you more artifact destruction.
This actually seems like kind of a fun deck to play, and I imagine you might actually do some damage if you can consistently drop a turn 2 coating and start going through land destruction on turn 3. You might even want to consider running this as a controlish sort of deck, running some mainboard pyroclasm instead of searing blaze, and maybe trying to squeeze in a surreal memoir or two so you can recover some of your tools...
Hmmmm, this seems like fun, I'm going to build this thing tonight.
i intialy dismised the trinket mage builds cause they run horrible cards like spellbomb. but they do aloow you do cantrip through your deck. I dunno i have been able to beat the aggresive decks but i keep losing to the mirror. maybe now that i have battle spheres in my sb i can even out the % in the mirror.
The short of it is, that the trinket package delutes the control aspect and makes it a like a weird midrange deck trying to control. maybe its just me
You put a lot of time and effort into this one - much appreciated!
I have been thinking about the pre-cons and their ROI for some time. It's good to see your breakdown on it.
The new ones are both a really good investment, esp. the mono-white one. I will be getting one soon.
As for your drafts, I found better cards to play than Blood Tithe in each. Not sure if you had good luck with it, but there's a reason you don't see
it in other draft walkthroughs. Draft 1: Plummet, Elixir or even the 3rd Basilisk would be better.
Draft 2: Duress or Axe over it (esp. with the Elemental). Draft 3: Sign in Blood or Purge. It seems you have a love affair with that card!
Looking forward to your next article! May all your M11 packs contain Titans!!
Nicely done! Although you did spoil one of the ideas I had for a future CCC. So CURSE YOU!!!
"Contributing even more to the bitterness people harbor against him, is the simple fact that secondary market has destroyed any chance for the casual player to actually obtain him"
Bingo! That's true about a lot of cards but especially so about Jace.
I like how all of your revamped Planeswalkers are on the sweet spot of 4cmc. If that was the standard, then we could reserve the 5cmc or higher spot for really devestating stuff and we could use the 3cmc slot for walkers that are more utility based.
Later, when the candidates had to create cards for a world they’d invented, the submissions were almost uniformly terrible. I immediately thought back to multiple choice and how poorly written it was – it read more like a showcase of Rosewater’s insider knowledge than an actual metric – and knew the whole process was doomed.
I love the rote denigration . . . using "former sit-com writer" as a pejorative, lauding your own skills while writing with some questionable grammar and structural/composition issues, etc. I mean . . . if we think the market is at all efficient . . .
I applaud the effort - this clearly took an immense amount of time and energy - but, somewhat ironically, I think you fail the same bias/validity test you're pushing in the penultimate section. I don't the article actually does what you intended it to.
Everything you post here comes from TEACHING theory, not job hiring theory. He's screening candidates, not handing out diplomas. Note that screening doesn't mean hiring either, it just means weeding out some of the several hundreds of people to a manageable number. Most employers screen candidates based on spelling mistakes, color of their ties, freshness of breath, and a whole lot of other things that don't have much to do with the actual job.
He doesn't give a damn in what style you learn best, he wants to know if your ideas on design mesh with the current team's philosophy. Questions 1-3 don't test memorization, as you tried to prove, because those cards don't exist. That's why this article is a great big fail.
Your summary of the duel decks is very useful and interesting. I was aware of Daze being from the Jace vs Chandra but I wasn't aware of the other cards that were only printed in the other decks. Especially surprising was the value of the Commander Deck, something I'd never know otherwise. Learned a few interesting things here, keep up the good work!
The mana is horrible and I can't count the number of times I've been locked out of casting a Glimmerpoint Stag or Venser because I've gotten all Islands or Plains. Guess I'm used to being spoiled with all the options in Standard and with the fetchlands/manlands/Terramorphic last block. Have you tried running the Origin Spellbombs in your list? That is something I've seen people start running the last week and having the card draw and early chump blockers is good because this deck has a tough time beating some of those aggro builds.
I was unable to make any PRE's this weekend. I a raging battle between my will to play and my bed... my bed won. Still, interesting to see what kind of decks pop out of this format.
Mark Rosewater has admitted that in retrospect he would have changed at least a couple of questions based on the feedback he received after the test. I agree that some of the questions could have been formulated more clearly.
I have to ask though: the purpose of this test was to cut down the number of applicants from 790 to 51. How much work do you think it would take to devise a system that would make this cut both fairly and efficiently? My attitude towards the test is that it could have been better but at least it was less arbitrary than a random drawing.
The problems with the test highlight the problems with the GDS2 as a whole. It is being run more as a drawn-out job interview that the public can eavesdrop on and not as a public contest that happens to result in a hire for WotC. The distinction between the two is that MaRo/WotC is not putting a lot of resources into customer service (subpar multiple choice test; tight deadlines for contestants; massive articles that the average person has no time to read).
i have had some success with uw walkers in block. i basically took a sample of about 5-6 lists and incorporated a litle bit of each like frank karsten and his agragate lists. I will point out to people who dont know yet, the mana in block is terribleeeee. other then that, this is a pretty sweet archtype.
Yeah instead of this test was messed up, this sounded more like you were tryin to justify you're failing at it in oreder to not damage your own ego...like others beat me to saying, sour grapes?
Great summary of the event in this article. I always liked how Xaos would get a quote from the players, as it's interesting to see where they're coming from and what they're trying to do with their decks. The screenshots are a great addition, they can really give you a sense of the games being played and how the deck can work. While I like that Xaos usually included some video footage, having the final match highlighted is also fun to see, especially that final game.
Good article here, most of what you say is spot on. Planeswalker cost is a definite determining factor of their play. It will be interesting to see if we ever get another three mana walker, rare slot walker, or remakes of original walkers for M12. Would be great if we did, introducing five chase mythics in a core set worked pretty decent with the Titans but introducing five new mythic walkers would be too much for one set. I'm also curious to see if we get third iterations of some of these and waiting to see if each walker definitely gets a second version. Don't know if anyone else caught it but "The Magic Show" did a flashback to last year around the time Jace was printed and a lot of the pros were saying "Overrated, not very playable, etc." which was pretty interesting. As you mention, most of this being due to the Bloodbraid and Cascade menace.
I'm going to play around the issue and from a generic stand point say that you made some very clear points and I agree with the issues related to having a multiple choice test as part of this, I've never been one for those. For example in my one class right now we write a ton of papers weekly and I'm sitting on a 90%. For our midterm the prof gave us a multiple choice test and I got a 50% despite studying. After talking to the Prof she realized that clearly it wasn't a good judge and gave me an opportunity to write another paper for extra credit. Everyone has their strengths and multiple choice isn't necessarily a great judge of how smart someone is.
thx for the commnet all, just an FYI I'm still hoping week 4 to be on time and be out next week, but I'm working on finishing up my final papers for my masters classes so I haven't even started it yet, but I'm going to give it my best in hopes of getting it out on time for you guys
EDIT: also could someone help me out, I have 7PDC listed as saturdays there, but is it sundays?
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/114a
Where are the actual questions and the actual answers to go with them? I searched your article for a link, but could not find it. I took this test too, and I also plan to write something about it. To keep this in perspective, let's examine some of my answers for those you found confusing.
1 (C) black
Giving first strike an off-color activation cost (obviously in white or red) could be printed on a monoblue or monogreen creature.
2 (a) common
It's not tricky enough for rare or mythic, and if it was uncommon, the power+toughness would be greater than 3/1. It's likely a common vampire at 5 mana (4B), which is a black Ambush Party analogue. Even if I took this test again, I don't believe the correct answer is 'uncommon'. This common is a trash uncommon, and I'd never submit or print it at uncommon. Perhaps this means I'm not suitable as a designer for the current R&D.
3 (c) is not possible
I did not find questions 1-3 'linked' at all, as they each dealt with a different sphere of design.
5.) (e) sorcery discard
flash/shroud is blue/green
doublestrike is red/white
P/T switch is blue/red
T) gain two life is white/green or green/blue (selkie H. mage)
T) Discard at sorcery speed is black and nothing else... if it was also draw or had black mana on activation could be blue/black, if had punisher or draw/discard could be red/black
I don't see your point here. The question did exactly what it supposed to do, test a deep understanding of black vs. multicolor.
Question 6 -- yes, I completely agree this question was terrible if e was the correct answer.
15 (c)
not all demons fly so not A
demons are iconic but not for power/toughness
c) was likely in 2004, under modern design not so sure, since demons are iconic as the 'personificaiton of evil' and 'tempters' I think C is the most likely still
removing 'combat' is a step back so no D
upping power level to discard hand is not likely too powerful not E
I don't know what the 'answer' is as you did not include it, but this was my answer.
29) b (was my answer, was this the right one? you don't say)
Which of the following enchantments are we least likely to print?
a) All creatures with changeling have flying. not fully in theme, Levitation
b) All creatures with echo have deathtouch. --WTF
c) All creatures with exalted have lifelink. helpful in theme
d) All creatures with infect have first strike. helpful in theme
e) All creatures with landfall have haste. just as likely as A
40 (b) -- greater variety of game play, straight out of Rosewater's Kind Acts of Randomness article...
"Randomness is important because it creates surprises, makes the game play differently, and allows players to react." Randomness makes games more fun, more repeatable, and more skill-testing. Sounds awesome. Now we get to the tricky part of the discussion, the problem with randomness. Why wouldn't a game be filled to the brim with randomness? Because most gamers hate it.
Answer C is a downside... letting less skill player win is not an advantage. E is meh. D is wrong. A is the same as C restated.
It is interesting to note I read Rosewater's article on variance as part of answering this question and still got it wrong.
46 Devastating Summons (b)
Johnny asks 'what can I do with this?' he is excited by cards that open up possibilities. This means both Clone and Fauna Shaman are very Johnny. Johnny likes modular cards like Mortician Beetle which don't dictate a path and are open ended for many crazy comboes. Near Death Experience is a Johnny card because it is daring Johnny to come figure out and use it, create an experience around it. Devastating Summons is Johnny due to a hidden trick (you can tap land for mana before sac), but as tricks go, Johnny isn't a fan because it closes possibilities rather than open then. Summons is more spike, though I could see Johnny play it in Planar Birth with Plateaus and Sacred Foundries, etc... however that is a deck he'd only play once or twice before getting bored with it... too linear.
You shouldn't rant about 46. I mean it's easy to see Devastating Summons is far more 'spike' since it was a major tournament archetype for a couple months.
I'd like to sum this article critique by again asking for a link to where the real answers are posted.
Having just tested this for confirmation, just put tags around the HTML for the decklist.
Nice run down of the event and the format of the article is great.
How did you centre your deck lists though? I've been trying to work that out for ages.
I think Sanhedrin hit the nail on the head there. That was exactly my point. The multiple choice test was a poor metric for testing applicants, which is why the results for round 3 came back looking odd.
TwoHands you are exactly correct. I re-read the article this morning and was made that I made three grammar errors and two formatting errors. I wrote this over the course of two weeks and edited several parts over and over. I appreciate the consideration about how much work went into it. You are also correct in that I made a pretty big error in that I used myself as an example. Anyone who has written persuasive articles, or formal papers, knows that you're not supposed to use yourself as an example ever. I tried writing it without referencing myself, but then it seemed like it was lacking good examples. I even considered just quoting responses from the WotC message board, but that didn't sound right either. So I agree with you on that final part, that the article does fail from a perspective that people who read it can dismiss it as personal complaints. It appears as though several people who read this did just that.
Smack8001, you proved my point. This was used to screen candidates, but the screen doesn't filter out ALL the bad candidates. Its very nature allows for people to slip in that shouldn't be there. What would have been a better metric? Well, I already stated that in the article. They should have designed a thorough application and analysis test with short answers.
Lastly, to those that a crying "sour grapes," I am aware that this article CAN come off as that, as I explained in my answer to TwoHands. That is a fault of my own. I shouldn't have used myself as an example. It does not, however, change the nature of the test. If I had passed, I would still have these complaints. As it is, if we eliminated the questions with obvious flaws, I still would have gotten 8 or more wrong and still not passed. It's not an issue of whether or not I passed, because I wasn't going to pass either way. My goal in this article was to draw issue with, and point out the flaws of, this test. In fact, as much fun as I had writing answers to the Round 3 test (which I did just to see if I could do it), when I shared them with friends, they didn't really like them. So, I feel, even if I had made round 3, I probably would not be in the top 8. Of course, that's probably because I'm the only person that thinks an entire plane designed around Unglued/Unhinged would be a good idea. What can I say, it's the one thing MaRo and I agree on: our love of silver-bordered cards.
Well as you can probably tell from this article, I am a strong advocate of the anti-testing movement. Not sure where you are from, but there is a current craze in America to make everything dependent on standardized testing, which usually comes in the form of Multiple Choice tests. In answer to your question, here are some books that I enjoyed.
Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us
Understanding Dropouts: Statistics, Strategies, and High-Stakes Testing
Reading and Understanding Multivariate Statistics
If you have access to the ERIC database, you kind find hundreds of articles on this subject by typing "testing," or "high-stakes" into the search engine. I hope this got you interested in studying testing and test taking. It really is an interesting field.
Great deck idea. I love crazy johnny decks like this, they really are much more imaginitive and "fun" than the tier 1 decks that dominate the tournament scene. Just thought I'd throw some suggestions your way and my $0.02.
Why play white at all?
Why not cut the salvage scouts (since all they can really retrieve is your liquid metal coating anyway, and you're running it as a 4 of.) and the kor sanctifiers, and run Acidic Slime an extra manic vandal, an extra shatter, and an extra naturalize instead?
This will free up your mana base and actually give you more artifact destruction.
This actually seems like kind of a fun deck to play, and I imagine you might actually do some damage if you can consistently drop a turn 2 coating and start going through land destruction on turn 3. You might even want to consider running this as a controlish sort of deck, running some mainboard pyroclasm instead of searing blaze, and maybe trying to squeeze in a surreal memoir or two so you can recover some of your tools...
Hmmmm, this seems like fun, I'm going to build this thing tonight.
i intialy dismised the trinket mage builds cause they run horrible cards like spellbomb. but they do aloow you do cantrip through your deck. I dunno i have been able to beat the aggresive decks but i keep losing to the mirror. maybe now that i have battle spheres in my sb i can even out the % in the mirror.
The short of it is, that the trinket package delutes the control aspect and makes it a like a weird midrange deck trying to control. maybe its just me
my current list for refrence.
4 Elspeth Tirel
4 Venser, the Sojourner
4 Seachrome Coast
2 Sunblast Angel
11 Plains
4 Stoic Rebuttal
12 Island
3 Revoke Existence
3 Contagion Clasp
4 Volition Reins
3 Tumble Magnet
4 Glimmerpoint Stag
2 Disperse
Sideboard
3 Myr Battlesphere
2 Dispense Justice
2 Arrest
1 Revoke Existence
1 Contagion Clasp
4 Halt Order
2 Ratchet Bomb
You put a lot of time and effort into this one - much appreciated!
I have been thinking about the pre-cons and their ROI for some time. It's good to see your breakdown on it.
The new ones are both a really good investment, esp. the mono-white one. I will be getting one soon.
As for your drafts, I found better cards to play than Blood Tithe in each. Not sure if you had good luck with it, but there's a reason you don't see
it in other draft walkthroughs. Draft 1: Plummet, Elixir or even the 3rd Basilisk would be better.
Draft 2: Duress or Axe over it (esp. with the Elemental). Draft 3: Sign in Blood or Purge. It seems you have a love affair with that card!
Looking forward to your next article! May all your M11 packs contain Titans!!
-Rad
Nicely done! Although you did spoil one of the ideas I had for a future CCC. So CURSE YOU!!!
"Contributing even more to the bitterness people harbor against him, is the simple fact that secondary market has destroyed any chance for the casual player to actually obtain him"
Bingo! That's true about a lot of cards but especially so about Jace.
I like how all of your revamped Planeswalkers are on the sweet spot of 4cmc. If that was the standard, then we could reserve the 5cmc or higher spot for really devestating stuff and we could use the 3cmc slot for walkers that are more utility based.
Later, when the candidates had to create cards for a world they’d invented, the submissions were almost uniformly terrible. I immediately thought back to multiple choice and how poorly written it was – it read more like a showcase of Rosewater’s insider knowledge than an actual metric – and knew the whole process was doomed.
Sorry with my bad english.
Hello JustSin, I comment that I love your articles, I would like to help if I could. I wrote a small article is not quality of the PureMTGO articles, this is in Spanish the link: http://mtg-mtgo.blogspot.com/2010/11/una-forma-de-empezar-en-el-mol.html
I love the rote denigration . . . using "former sit-com writer" as a pejorative, lauding your own skills while writing with some questionable grammar and structural/composition issues, etc. I mean . . . if we think the market is at all efficient . . .
I applaud the effort - this clearly took an immense amount of time and energy - but, somewhat ironically, I think you fail the same bias/validity test you're pushing in the penultimate section. I don't the article actually does what you intended it to.
Whine, whine, whine.
Everything you post here comes from TEACHING theory, not job hiring theory. He's screening candidates, not handing out diplomas. Note that screening doesn't mean hiring either, it just means weeding out some of the several hundreds of people to a manageable number. Most employers screen candidates based on spelling mistakes, color of their ties, freshness of breath, and a whole lot of other things that don't have much to do with the actual job.
He doesn't give a damn in what style you learn best, he wants to know if your ideas on design mesh with the current team's philosophy. Questions 1-3 don't test memorization, as you tried to prove, because those cards don't exist. That's why this article is a great big fail.
Your summary of the duel decks is very useful and interesting. I was aware of Daze being from the Jace vs Chandra but I wasn't aware of the other cards that were only printed in the other decks. Especially surprising was the value of the Commander Deck, something I'd never know otherwise. Learned a few interesting things here, keep up the good work!
The mana is horrible and I can't count the number of times I've been locked out of casting a Glimmerpoint Stag or Venser because I've gotten all Islands or Plains. Guess I'm used to being spoiled with all the options in Standard and with the fetchlands/manlands/Terramorphic last block. Have you tried running the Origin Spellbombs in your list? That is something I've seen people start running the last week and having the card draw and early chump blockers is good because this deck has a tough time beating some of those aggro builds.
Great read, and nice videos :p.
I was unable to make any PRE's this weekend. I a raging battle between my will to play and my bed... my bed won. Still, interesting to see what kind of decks pop out of this format.
Mark Rosewater has admitted that in retrospect he would have changed at least a couple of questions based on the feedback he received after the test. I agree that some of the questions could have been formulated more clearly.
I have to ask though: the purpose of this test was to cut down the number of applicants from 790 to 51. How much work do you think it would take to devise a system that would make this cut both fairly and efficiently? My attitude towards the test is that it could have been better but at least it was less arbitrary than a random drawing.
The problems with the test highlight the problems with the GDS2 as a whole. It is being run more as a drawn-out job interview that the public can eavesdrop on and not as a public contest that happens to result in a hire for WotC. The distinction between the two is that MaRo/WotC is not putting a lot of resources into customer service (subpar multiple choice test; tight deadlines for contestants; massive articles that the average person has no time to read).
i have had some success with uw walkers in block. i basically took a sample of about 5-6 lists and incorporated a litle bit of each like frank karsten and his agragate lists. I will point out to people who dont know yet, the mana in block is terribleeeee. other then that, this is a pretty sweet archtype.
Yeah instead of this test was messed up, this sounded more like you were tryin to justify you're failing at it in oreder to not damage your own ego...like others beat me to saying, sour grapes?
Great summary of the event in this article. I always liked how Xaos would get a quote from the players, as it's interesting to see where they're coming from and what they're trying to do with their decks. The screenshots are a great addition, they can really give you a sense of the games being played and how the deck can work. While I like that Xaos usually included some video footage, having the final match highlighted is also fun to see, especially that final game.
Good article here, most of what you say is spot on. Planeswalker cost is a definite determining factor of their play. It will be interesting to see if we ever get another three mana walker, rare slot walker, or remakes of original walkers for M12. Would be great if we did, introducing five chase mythics in a core set worked pretty decent with the Titans but introducing five new mythic walkers would be too much for one set. I'm also curious to see if we get third iterations of some of these and waiting to see if each walker definitely gets a second version. Don't know if anyone else caught it but "The Magic Show" did a flashback to last year around the time Jace was printed and a lot of the pros were saying "Overrated, not very playable, etc." which was pretty interesting. As you mention, most of this being due to the Bloodbraid and Cascade menace.
The conceit that oozes from this article is astounding.
I'm going to play around the issue and from a generic stand point say that you made some very clear points and I agree with the issues related to having a multiple choice test as part of this, I've never been one for those. For example in my one class right now we write a ton of papers weekly and I'm sitting on a 90%. For our midterm the prof gave us a multiple choice test and I got a 50% despite studying. After talking to the Prof she realized that clearly it wasn't a good judge and gave me an opportunity to write another paper for extra credit. Everyone has their strengths and multiple choice isn't necessarily a great judge of how smart someone is.
thx for the commnet all, just an FYI I'm still hoping week 4 to be on time and be out next week, but I'm working on finishing up my final papers for my masters classes so I haven't even started it yet, but I'm going to give it my best in hopes of getting it out on time for you guys
EDIT: also could someone help me out, I have 7PDC listed as saturdays there, but is it sundays?