2018 'Deck of the Year' Awards: DISCUSSION

[theCapraAegagrus]

You can't make everyone HAPPY, but you may be able to make everyone UNHAPPY...

KILL THE CONTEST!

[STLBluesNut]

I vote best pips as we already know who wins best foil.

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[MagikFingerz]

I vote best pips as we already know who wins best foil.

Can't argue with that. Might as well just give Best Foil to Lotrek right away.

I vote for Best Deck for Gameplay. It seems more deserving of a separate category, being a subset of decks rather than just a small part of deck design (pips).

[Magic Tapp]

I vote best pips as we already know who wins best foil.

Can't argue with that. Might as well just give Best Foil to Lotrek right away.

I hear what you are saying but am not sure this would be so one-sided. Neo Wave and HotRS are very impressive.

[STLBluesNut]

Next year, does the VXD holographic foil count as foil? I know it is labeled as foil, but it seems like some sort of clear holographic coating, perhaps applied or stamped like a foil. Can a true metal foil really be clear?

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[rousselle]

Next year, does the VXD holographic foil count as foil? I know it is labeled as foil, but it seems like some sort of clear holographic coating, perhaps applied or stamped like a foil. Can a true metal foil really be clear?

It would certainly count for consideration as Best Innovation.

So, to be clear, my strongest preference is to include Best Deck for Gameplay.

Whether we also include Best Pips or Best Use of Foil, I'm totally willing to go with the flow on that. (Or, rather, do whatever PipChick says.)

[sinjin7]

Yes, yes, there have been some very nice foiled decks this year, but as others have already pointed out, we already know Lotrek would win this category. So of the 2 remaining categories, can I vote for neither and keep things at 14 categories? If not, I guess I'll go with best pips.

[PipChick]

You can't make everyone HAPPY, but you may be able to make everyone UNHAPPY...

KILL THE CONTEST!

yea, as the great Eleanor Roosevelt said; "You'll be damned if you do, damned if you don't." *sigh*

so, ya'know...





annnyywwaayys, I'mma put you down for "Best Pips" as you've kinda already expressed being more so in favor of that category staying - all good TwoPiece? lol



But in all seriousness folks, I'm really not trying to push this contest in any particular direction, and am most certainly not trying to mold it into what I think it should be; this is UC's DOTY awards - not mine or anyone else's - but the community's as a whole that we all share in and are part of. So, even though I've sorta been taking a more active role in pushing things forward, I wanna be clear that it's really not because I feel the irresistible desire to be some big bad boss lady of this whole operation & voting business - very far from it actually lol as I honestly couldn't care less if someone else were doing the pushing, so to speak - but I do feel that things need to be pushed from time to time just to move forward so we don't continue to incessantly go 'round and 'round in circles debating the same issues over and over again and/or go off track in unproductive tagents unrelated to the more pressing matters at hand without making progress towards a clear goal. The way I understood our objectives (and correct me if I'm wrong), it seems everyone agreed that we needed to aim towards addressing the following:

[✔] Accurate & Comprehensive Deck List

[_] Award Categories - soooo close; almost there

[_] Nominations - thead can/will be opened as soon as list of categories are finalize - deadline is end of the week unless public outcry otherwise

[_] Rules - these are still up for discussion & can be debated to y'all's hearts' content lol OR just stick with last year's rules - still have some time

[✔] Prizes - thread has been opened and some pretty sweet prize donations have been rollin' in

[_] Participation - this is really more of everyone's own personal box they need to be sure to check when voting time comes around, but we can all help encourage participation from others by promoting this contest among other social media platforms; oooorrrr.... bribing (with money, gifts, sexual favors, etc), blackmailing, guilt-tripping, threatening, and/or persistently peer pressuring other members lol - whatever means and method(s) works for you - be creative and just have fun! lol

I'm sorry if this all is draining the fun outta the contest for some people - trust me, I hate being Major Buzzkill and it's at times just as soul-sucking for me too - but, as I'm not trying to be solely taking totalitarian control in the decision-making process (what right do I or anyone else have to do so?), it's important that everyone has the opportunity to voice their opinions/ideas and for all of us to ensure that they are heard before a final decision that is reflected by the agreement of the majority is made - no matter how infuriatingly inefficient and time consuming this democratic approach may feel lol. And by all means, if that final decision does not seem fair to everyone as a whole, than we can most definitely reevaluate that and come to a different solution, even if that means someone else stepping in to make those decisions. Whatever works for everyone, works for me because there's nothing I personally want more than for this contest to be run fair and square, regardless of who's doing the pushin' lol - it really doesn't matter one way or another to me. (so no Allan - even if she is oh so awesome, we're not just gunna roll with whatever PipChick says lmao )

I admit though that I do get antsy when I feel like there's no clear direction and/or things seem like they've reached a stalemate and that's why/when I start pushing but I apologize because I know that (even though I hav'ta remind myself often) that's my own problem and it can be overbearing and irritating for others. So, sorry guys if that's the case...

[STLBluesNut]

Since you brought it up...

I knew nothing of card collecting last year, so I wasn't here and don't know exactly how the rules worked. It did seem that last year, or previous years, there was at least partially some sort of point system for correctly guessing the winners. Those points were then used to award the very generous prize donations.

I firmly believe that the prizes should be drawn for, lottery style, with every participant having an equal chance of winning. I don't feel this fun event should be turned into some sweaty, try hard contest where one doesn't feel like they can vote for whatever deck they like without the possible "penalty" of losing out on prizes because they didn't get enough points for picking the most popular choices.

Alternately, it seems they may be more prizes, at least total number of decks, than participants. All of the decks can be split up as evenly as possible, each lot getting a randomly generated number and each participant getting a randomly generated number. Whatever lot you number matches is your prize.

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[Eric Lee]

Oh yeah, I second that idea. Let's make it random where many people can get a chance to win. I was very new last year and didn't know enough of the decks to even dare attempt the vote. (looking back at how few actually did , I should have jumped in!)

However maybe the best/grand prize (brick of rares or a few super rares) is reserved for the one whose list matches the final list of winners? That'll make it very fair.

[JuFiN]

I dunno how this keeps coming up, the only way to ensure honest real voting is randomly awarding prizes (randomly rank the participants and let them pick in order as was done last year).

As for splitting up the prizes I think you might be misunderstanding how prizes are given, the decks I am offering will be sent direct from me to the person who chooses them as his award, I don't intend to split them up and pay shipping 12 times to send decks to 12 different people. So total number of decks =/= total number of prizes. Individual forum members are offering to ship a care package to each other kinda like a not so secret Secret Santa except it also serves as a way to encourage people to vote in a cool contest!

It is worth mentioning though that I'm sure people would prefer winning even one deck rather than nothing so I encourage any and everyone reading this to consider donating a prize to the contest, don't be intimidated by how amazing some of the already offered ones are. Your prize may not be the best and may even be the worst, but I'm sure for the lucky winner of that prize they will be very happy you offered it otherwise they would get nothing at all!

[STLBluesNut]

As for splitting up the prizes I think you might be misunderstanding how prizes are given, the decks I am offering will be sent direct from me to the person

I see. While this makes sense, what I had in mind was coming from a central location or pool for some reason. Like the donators would send them to a common person to handle shipping out. That doesn't make much sense for shipping reasons. My misunderstanding.

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[theCapraAegagrus]

Last year, the prizes were drawn at random... This doesn't need to be discussed unless something has changed (that I haven't witnessed).

[PipChick]

I decided to postpone to allow for extra time to members who frequent UC more during the weekend, but "Nominations thread" will be opened later today when I get home from work - ya'll have been notified lol

[Eric Lee]

I decided to postpone to allow for extra time to members who frequent UC more during the weekend, but "Nominations thread" will be opened later today when I get home from work - ya'll have been notified lol

You know, for all your hard work here, you deserve a honorary award like Best new Mod of the year! Mike? Any mods to help back me up here?

[PipChick]

I decided to postpone to allow for extra time to members who frequent UC more during the weekend, but "Nominations thread" will be opened later today when I get home from work - ya'll have been notified lol

You know, for all your hard work here, you deserve a honorary award like Best new Mod of the year! Mike? Any mods to help back me up here?

NOOOO, haha - definitely not lol - It's actually all the other mods that have helped me lol. Besides, I do this because I want to and hope that it encourages others to also wanna contribute in whatever small ways they can to this already amazing community Besides, you don't have to be a mod to make UC great; we've got a TON of really awesome members that are the real MVPs of UC

[theCapraAegagrus]

I decided to postpone to allow for extra time to members who frequent UC more during the weekend, but "Nominations thread" will be opened later today when I get home from work - ya'll have been notified lol

You know, for all your hard work here, you deserve a honorary award like Best new Mod of the year! Mike? Any mods to help back me up here?

Cocaine is a hell of a drug...

[MagikFingerz]

I agree with Amy.

Buuuuut, I also think she deserves an award

[theCapraAegagrus]

TwoPiece for Mod 2019.

My parents will endorse me.

Make your nightmare a reality!

[PipChick]

I agree with Amy.

Buuuuut, I also think she deserves an award

Awww shucks - that's super flattering but no lol. Besides, the whole point of going through all this effort was with the objective in mind to to narrow down & reduce the total number of award categories, NOT to be adding to them!! C'mon guys! STAY FOCUSED!!

TwoPiece for Mod 2019.

My parents will endorse me.

Make your nightmare a reality!

The Party of PipChick supports this candidate... but only if you run under the platform of "Make Posts Crap Again" lmao



Annnnyyyways, moving on; from the looks of those that voiced their award category preference, it looks like "Best Pips" has the majority and will remain in the line up - that brings our final total to 15 which I think is reasonable - the Nominations thread will be open shortly so stay tuned

[PipChick]

The Nominations Thread is up! YAY!

Anyways, as stated there, I just want to reiterate that I'd like to keep that particular thread neat and clean with just nominations/pics so it remains uncluttered of superfluous comments as that's not the thread's intended purpose. However, if anyone has any comments/questions/concerns/etc. regarding nominations (or really anything DOTY related), please feel free to PM me or post here and we can address those and make changes/updates as deemed necessary.

We've got a few weeks until the end of the year and nominations will continue to be accepted from now until the time at which voting will be announced to be open (TBD) but I hope y'all are as excited about DOTY as I am! Get nommin' folks lol and be sure to spread the word to any and all others that may be interested in participating

Let's make 2018 the best DOTY Contest ever! YAY!

[sinjin7]

When was it decided that we would do nominations instead of open voting? Part of the reason why we wanted to reduce categories is so that we would encourage voting. Nominations just adds an additional step in a process that was already complicated and needed streamlining. Most importantly, if we limit the voting to nominated decks, then there will be some/many voters who wish to participate only to find out their favorite decks are not eligible to be voted on due to an arbitrary pre-nomination process.

Reducing categories to make the contest more user-friendly makes sense to increase participation and enjoyment of the contest. Adding another administrative process to the contest that serves to restrict your freedom to vote for the decks of your choice because some other people didn't deem your decks to be worthy of inclusion seem counter-intuitive to increasing participation and enjoyment of the contest.

[PipChick]

When was it decided that we would do nominations instead of open voting? Part of the reason why we wanted to reduce categories is so that we would encourage voting. Nominations just adds an additional step in a process that was already complicated and needed streamlining. Most importantly, if we limit the voting to nominated decks, then there will be some/many voters who wish to participate only to find out their favorite decks are not eligible to be voted on due to an arbitrary pre-nomination process.

Reducing categories to make the contest more user-friendly makes sense to increase participation and enjoyment of the contest. Adding another administrative process to the contest that serves to restrict your freedom to vote for the decks of your choice because some other people didn't deem your decks to be worthy of inclusion seem counter-intuitive to increasing participation and enjoyment of the contest.

Well, it seemed like a common reason people expressed for not voting last year or only partially voting was because choosing decks for each category (some of which not everyone is really familiar with) from literally hundreds of qualifying decks to have been released this past year was overwhelming & intimidating, especially for new members who perhaps haven't been in the hobby for very long and therefore aren't even aware of all the decks to have come out in the time prior to joining the hobby - this way, in the several weeks leading up to the big vote, any member can nominate any number of decks for whichever categories they think should be up for consideration. Ultimately, this will narrow down the number of choices so when voting does come around, there will already be a handful of great possible candidates for each category from which they can choose from. But don't be mistaken; this does not eliminate the option to write in any other deck that wasn't explicitly nominated by another member prior to voting - so really, there shouldn't be any concern that you can't vote for literally any deck you'd want to anyways.

Also, I think going with the nomination route will keep the DOTY awards on people's mind so when the time does come around for voting, it'll be that much easier for both members that have been actively apart of this whole process from the get-go as well as for those that perhaps haven't.

[MagikFingerz]

As far as I see it, given enough time every participant should be able to nominate the deck they think deserves recognition.

Nominations make the process easier IMO, at least for the voters. Instead of going through the whole list of releases for each category when figuring out who to vote for, selecting the nominee you feel should win is a much simpler task. You nominate the decks you feel strongly about, and trust that the rest of the community nominates worthy decks in categories you're not fully on top of.

E.g. for non-cardists, selecting from a few nominees (that have been nominated by those of us who are cardists) is MUCH easier than having nothing to go on.

EDIT: Wrote this before I saw Amy's post.

[theCapraAegagrus]

Oops.

[TheGentlemanWake]

REDACTED!

[Bradius]

Did I say something? Don't remember.

[TheGentlemanWake]

Ack! Sorry! Fixed.

[STLBluesNut]

is anyone else not seeing any decks on the non-KS tab of PipChick's awesome deck list? Perhaps there aren't any in that section yet?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[PipChick]

is anyone else not seeing any decks on the non-KS tab of PipChick's awesome deck list? Perhaps there aren't any in that section yet?

oh no! looks like the query formula got goofed up - no worries; I'll take a look and fix it when I get a chance. In the meanwhile, just hold tight

EDIT: fixed! If there's any other issues, just let me know