Houston, we may have a little bit of a problem...
Okay, just to warn y'all, this is going to be a bit of a long post... sorry in advance.
Now, I probably should have clarified this before, but since it hadn't come up as being a potential issue, I didn't and I apologize because I think it's worth mentioning as it relates to deck eligibility for the DOTYs.
Anyways, this entire time I've been considering a deck as 'released' and therefore eligible for the DOTYs not only based on its availability to order, but rather more specifically, based on the criteria that those specific deck orders have been filled and the deck has actually been making it into the hands of the general public - basically, if a deck has been physically received by any one person, than it's considered 'released'. The reason for making this very, seemingly trivial, but clear distinction is for 2 reasons:
- because, as we've seen before, sometimes a deck is 'released' and available for order, but orders don't actually get filled for a period of time (or, in even rarer cases, may never get filled) for whatever reasons - the most recent example I could think of would be Daniel Madison's Trawlers (or pretty much anything 'released' by DM as he seems to have a pretty terrible reputation in regards to managing orders and such... ) in which he allows pre-orders but takes FOREVER to actually get them out to people and often does so in what seems like small batches with many, many people still not having received theirs. But as I said, if even one deck is out there in the wild in someone's hands, I still consider it 'released' regardless of whatever issues may be holding up the majority of the other orders.
- because you can't really judge a deck based on the different criteria of each category only on the ad pics - because, as we've also seen before, sometimes changes are made that greatly affect the look/feel of the deck that could hinder one's judgement on whether or not that deck should be awarded whatever title it's being considered for.
With that said, this distinction really
only affects the eligibility of decks for the DOTYs when they are 'released' at the very end of the year in which case orders may not be fulfilled until early of next year, therefore disqualifying them from eligibility of that year's DOTYs.
This year, we had the issue brought up in regards to the eligibility of Virtuoso FW17 which had been nominated for the category 'Best Deck for Cardistry & Flourishing) and I already discussed
here. Initially, I was in favor of allowing it to stay despite the deck's name that suggests otherwise, but things have come to light that make me question whether it really should...
To break it down; even though Virtuoso FW17 was available for order late in 2017 (Dec. 20th exactly - which resulted in so much interest that the sheer number of people trying to order all at once actually caused the site to crash and required that the release be postpone while they fixed the technical issues - which then resulted in a later relaunch of it's release on Dec. 26th), from my scouring of the deep depths of the internet, it seems orders weren't technically filled and the deck wasn't physically in people's hands until very early of 2018 which means that it never should've even been considered for 2017's DOTYs at all because it technically wasn't "released" then. Sure, people could order it, but if those orders were not actually getting out to people than I don't think it should have ever been considered "released" and therefore eligible to qualify. Nevertheless, it was and this is where are problem lies.
Looking back through the DOTY Award results of last year from Allan's awesome 'Hall of Fame' thread
here, it seems this deck was not only considered eligible, it actually won first place in the 'Best Deck for Flourishing' category - which is kinda ironic because in 2017, no one had yet even had the opportunity to actually handle this deck and it was only in 2018 that they did...
That's not to say that those votes were or should've been invalid because technically the contest
did conclude a few months into 2018, at which point orders had been fulfilled and people were able to make a fair judgment.
However, I feel it still was a bit of an oversight and it begs the question; should the Virtuoso FW17 still be considered for eligibility in this year's DOTYs??
Right now, it's a bit of a difficult conundrum as it not only qualified for 2017 when I don't believe it really should have, but also that it won...
So, I'm still unsure if we should keep it in for this year. On one hand, our oversight from last year shouldn't disqualify a deck that should be considered for this year, but on the other, is it really fair considering it already won an award in that category which it should never have qualified for recognition to begin with...
If it remained in this year's line-up for nominations, we risk the hypothetical chance that the same deck may win in the same category 2 years in a row which totally defeats the purpose of holding annual awards if we allowed such a deck to possibly win twice
For this reason, I'm in favor of removing it from the list of nominations and revoking it's eligibility based on a technicality.
If there's anyway to confirm that even just one person received their order before Jan. 1st, 2018, than that would definitively disqualify it and the case would be closed - but unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to find such evidence and believe me, I've tried searching high and low just to put this controversy to rest... ugh
Anyways, let me know what'cha y'all think - should it stay or should it go?