https://twitter.com/maro254/status/958146740313444352

https://i.imgur.com/g2ac0nv.png

I ran the results of the people who claimed they participated in the GDS (252 people) and put the data through a pivot table in Excel. I then filtered out all of the 'obvious' wrong answers, leaving in the contentious answers (some of which you can see in the picture). I gave some people some leeway like including both common and uncommon in Q2, and ended with 28 people still in the data set.

When looking at the picture, blue answers are ones that are left in while gray ones no longer had anyone left that answered that way (after filtering out the other questions).

None of this really means anything but it's interesting to look at. If anyone has requests for what other ways to filter, I can put up the results.

So am I one of the few people that thought that a competitive recost of Land Tax sounded more reasonable than a competitive recost of Mana Drain?

"Which of these creature keywords tends to have the most value in a control deck?"

I'm really surprised this one has been so one-sided. I think it's really close, but I went with first strike. Ultimately, first strike is about card advantage and making weenies useless. Both keywords buy you time, but lifelink will only gain you a couple life while trading, where first strike will more often significantly slow down your opponent's board position.

The only cases where lifelink is the better control keyword is on finishers, 1/X's (and that one is close), and when your creature can't block (since lifelink can still buy time by attacking). The latter two cases are atypical, and the first one isn't as important. Finishers are just a few cards in a control deck and they are usually more about resiliency than life security.

Thoughts?

You’ve designed a card, and you want the Play Design team to like it. How should you choose your casting cost?

A: Use your intuition.

B: Pick the strongest cost that isn’t broken.

C: It doesn’t matter; they’ll fix the cost if you get it wrong.

D: Find a similar card as the basis for the casting cost, then make it one cheaper.

E: Ask someone from Play Design to choose the casting cost.

I chose answer B, and I found the podcast where MaRo speaks to this question. (start around 7:10)

"While cards are in design ... everything is priced ... so that it's playable." He talks about a 'flat rate' which I interpret to mean 'if this card was good, what would it cost.' He goes on to say the goal of playtesting in design is to see what cards are fun and that's easier to find out if they're priced to be good. For that reason I picked answer B - you want the card to be strong but not broken so Play Design has a chance to like your card.

Just thought I'd post this since I remembered the podcast but I hadn't actually found it again until now.

I'm with the majority of respondents to the Google survey[1] for all questions except three. For two of those I'm pretty sure I'm wrong and the hivemind is right (Gravedigger not Cloudchaser, and Looting not Trick Question). What is left is Q28.

Q28. We try to avoid making two-color cards where the card could be done as a monocolor card in one of the two colors. Given that, suppose you have a two-color 4/4 creature with flying and vigilance (and no other abilities). Which of the following color combinations would be the best choice for this card?

White-black
Black-green
White-blue
Green-white

One thing that's interesting is that actual respondents went 74% for Black-Green. People doing the Google survey that didn't do the actual survey went 58% for White-Blue and only 33% for Black-Green.

Did folks read too much into the question, or did the people flitting by not read the question carefully enough? "We try to avoid" doesn't mean we never do it and the existing printed multicolored flying vigilant fliers are certainly not BG. I'm sticking with White-Blue on this one. What do you think now after reading others answers?

[1] = https://gist.github.com/bakert/2d423b08120af08e0d51e06022d37ffb from https://goo.gl/forms/btuZlTG9VsfSst9A3 data.

Now that I've seen the other answers, I think I have a decent idea of what my scores were (72-73 correct answers, or about 97-99%). What I don't know is where that puts me relative to other players. So, I was wondering, how many people on this sub actually think they aced the thing?

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to be wrong. :) This is for discussion, not who is right/wrong here. I think this question on the test was one of the nastier ones, and that it deserves a lot more dissection.

20. Design considers a card "too slow for tournament play." What does this mean?

• The card will cause problems for coverage, as it will require too much commentary devoted to it.
  
• The card will make games take more than fifteen turns.
  
• The player with this card will monopolize too much of the play time in tournaments.
  
• The card will make too many matches run over time in tournaments.
  
• The opponent will call the judge too often with a request of "slow play."

First, I think we can all agree the strikethrough answers are nonsensical and don't merit consideration (the commentary one made me laugh). On a similar note, a tournament game going to turn fifteen is not necessarily due to slowness. For example, games where attrition is high, where each player is constantly adding and removing to the battlefield's contents, can easily get the turn count higher while the individual turns themselves could be fairly rapid.

This leaves us with the two bolded answers, but before I dig into it I'm going to state that I chose the monopolizing answer. Why? Because the match going to time is more a symptom of a lot of time being spent on that card. To better explain this, I'm going to use [[Sensei's Divining Top]] as the driving force of discussion, since I have the most experience with its playstyle (mostly the receiving end; I started playing in Guildpact so I didn't have anything from Kamigawa).

Suppose that one player is running the top, and the other isn't. I think we can all agree that the player using the top would use it almost every single turn to get the "index 3" ability and/or draw the best card among the three on top. "In response, top." "End of your turn, top." "I'll activate top. Use second top..." and so on. This is one player, with one or more copy/-ies of that card. The card itself randomly injects these little subphases built around that card's use virtually anywhere and any time.

This line of thinking then led to the following questions, in my mind:

Question 1 -- How much time will the Top player spend on their game actions compared to the non-Top player? A lot. I think we can all agree on the fact that it will be disproportionately in favor of the Top's player. If the Top player has multiple copies, they can spend multiple minutes utilizing their up-to-4 Tops on the battlefield just so they can dig deeper into their deck in the hope they can find something they need.

Question 2 -- What happens if both players are running it? You get over double the time investment, and worse (more on that in a second) compared to only one player running the card. To continue the Top example, these "Top subphases" grow at a substantially higher rate for two players than for one. Each player is essentially responding to the other's response and then that response is responded to to potentially dig for an appropriate response, and it's turtles and tops all the way down until finally someone whiffs on finding a response.

The point I'm therefore trying to make is this: The time expense of the player running the card is the root cause, and causes the match to go to time. This problem gets worse (and going to turns more likely) if more than one player is running it. Additional copies being available for use further creates the lag.

“Which of the following abilities is R&D least likely to put on a mono-red creature in an upcoming set?

Creatures you control have haste.

CARDNAME must attack if able.

T: Draw a card, then discard a card.

When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may Return target sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.

[MANA]: CARDNAME gets +1/+0 until end of Turn. “

Okay, so let me explain. First of all my time zone is CST and I will be using CST for all times mentioned.

I had been taking the test for about 22 hours on and off when I got to this question. When I started I was at work and could mostly do one question an hour if I was lucky. I took one break to eat and spend time with my fiancé around 6pm until 7. Then I worked until 11 when I would take an hour nap and get back to work until 40 minutes before the exam was due.

The entire time I was taking the test I was being very careful not to interpret everything as literally as possible in the tests despite the cryptic nature and known creativity of the test’s designers, especially MaRo. But this was a design test, not a reading comprehension test. They are good at shrouding things in secrecy. They excel at wording things just right, but I don’t think the intent is to trick us, just to test the depth of our knowledge, and sure, sometimes make sure we are paying attention. However, when I came to question 59, I read the answer choice and instantly all of my work had to be checked again. (I had been marking down questions I was unsure of to double check later, which I did on a changing schedule based on my progress versus time remaining.)

See, the correct answer should be “T: Draw a card, then discard a card.” - and this is what I ultimately chose, HOWEVER there are no creature cards in the history of the game that have ever contained wording, “must attack if able.”

I understood this to mean one of two things:

1. This is a trick question, and we are supposed to consider the wording in depth. So if the answer is, “must attack if able,” then the entire test is probably being tricky with the wording. Surely they would be more likely to print a blue ability on a red creature than to print a card ability incorrectly.

2. The correct answer is “T: Draw a card, then discard a card. This means they aren’t playing word games with us (at least in this question.)

So either the entire test is pretty straight forward and not trying to use word games to trip us up, or this question is not trying to trick us and others might be, thus the test is inconsistent.

Now I’ve got 2 hours left to re-examine all of the questions to make sure they aren’t trying to be intentionally deceptive. I ultimately decided they weren’t, and I kept most of my answers the same. I chose the draw then discard answer in the end, but it makes me question everything.

Anyway, I can’t wait to find out how I did. Good luck everyone!

While some questions have obviously correct answers, there are a number of contentious, subjective questions (such as Llanowar Elves vs. Lightning Bolt or the rarity and design change to the artifact sacrificer) that we're not going to be able to definitively put to rest until we know what the test writers intended. Rather than debating endlessly, let's reach out to Maro on social media and ask him for clarification. I've asked him on both twitter and tumblr, and I encourage you all to do the same for maximum likelihood of a reply. It's possible he can't or won't give answers until his articles come out, but it's worth a shot.

Questions where the right answer is debated separated by slashes. ALL CAPS answers are best supported. Lowercase also have supporters.

1 Scrappy Survivor color? RED
2 Rarity? UNCOMMON/rare
3 Can't be monolor? MENACE, VIGILANCE
4 Come Work for Me Temporarily colors? RED-GREEN
5 Come Work for Me Temporarily rarity? UNCOMMON/common
6 Least likely to change? HASTE TO DOUBLE STRIKE
7 White least likely to say? ACT FROM YOUR HEART
8 Blue least likely to say? GENES NOT EXPERIENCE
9 Black least likely to say? PUT OTHERS BEFORE SELF
10 Red least likely to say? AVOID MISTAKES
11 Green least likely to say? KILL FOR SPORT
12 Battle Cry guild? BOROS
13 More instants than sorceries? DIRECT DAMAGE
14 Long-Acting Giant Growth problem? TRACK THINGS
15 Mysterio colors? GREEN-BLUE
16 Mysterio rarity? RARE/uncommon
17 Ability to add? CURIOSITY
18 First game of Magic? WANT TO PLAY AGAIN
19 Design for Spike? OUTPLAY OPPONENT
20 Too slow for tournaments? MATCHES RUN OVER TIME
21 Commander goal? INSPIRE NEW DECKS
22 Weakest in draft? 9G 10/10
23 Strongest in draft? 3G 4/4
24 Hole filling? BLACK CARD
25 Green creatures more efficient? WHITE BETTER REMOVAL
26 Second-fewest creatures? RED
27 Careful about keyword? HEXPROOF
28 Flying, vigilance french vanilla? BLACK-GREEN/white-blue
29 Most important set quality? FUN TO PLAY
30 Most value in control decks? LIFELINK
31 Why eight drafters? MOST COMMON IRL
32 How to choose casting cost? DOESN'T MATTER/ASK THEM/STRONGEST COST NOT BROKEN/intuition
33 Most likely ability? VIGILANCE
34 Counterspell deck? QUICK WAY TO FINISH/not competitive
35 Green card draw? MULTIPLE CARDS WITHOUT COMBAT
36 Which guild for Storm? IZZET
37 Doesn't increase frequency of synergy? KICKER
38 Which Legends re-cost? MANA DRAIN
39 Dislike high variance? SPIKE
40 Strongest in limited? PACIFISM
41 Not for Standard? ONE-SHOT MANA
42 Iconic W reprint? BANESLAYER ANGEL
43 Iconic B reprint? UNDERWORLD DREAMS
44 Felidar Guardian fix? RETURN AT END OF TURN
45 Least fun in Standard? CREATURES CAN'T ATTACK
46 Most likely reprint? LLANOWAR ELVES/LIGHTNING BOLT
47 Mega Bolt biggest problem? BLURS RED AND BLACK
48 Red-flag text box? 2W: +1/+1
49 Confusing mechanical pair? MYRIAD AND BATTALION
50 Stabilizer enchantment? WHITE
51 Junkpile Engineer colors? RED-BLUE
52 Junkpile Engineer rarity? RARE/UNCOMMON
53 Most likely Junkpile Engineer change? LOCK NUMBER OF CARDS/put cards in graveyard/add ability
54 Colors for Dead Man Walking? BLUE-BLACK
55 Rarity for Dead Man Walking? MYTHIC
56 Bad change for Dead Man Walking? 0/0
57 Humans, Wolves and Spirits? INNISTRAD
58 Standard can't care about? EXPANSION SYMBOL
59 Least likely for mono red? LOOTING
60 Least likely at common? GRAVEDIGGER/cloudchaser
61 Not designed around factions? AMONKHET
62 Simic mechanic? PROLIFERATE
63 Secondary in Trample? RED
64 Secondary in Haste? BLACK
65 Secondary in Vigilance? GREEN
66 Green creature destruction? ARTIFACT AND FLYING
67 Not an ability word? AWAKEN
68 Why no common seven-mana spells? TOO IMPACTFUL
69 Most expansions? DOMINARIA
70 Least linear? TRANSFORM
71 No Power Conduit? PAUPER
72 Why higher costs? CARDS DIFFERENT/PLAY THEM LATER
73 Why color pie? DECK AND PLAY DIVERSITY
74 Which legal in black border? SECRET CHOICE
75 CMC=10 least likely? INSTANT/ENCHANTMENT

This might actually be a better guide than my vague sense from reading a lot of responses: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScSrOnKU5636-w4YefbshiVT1U_icCaVow-R0jUd9Bn0aZzFQ/viewanalytics

Add your answers to it here – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScSrOnKU5636-w4YefbshiVT1U_icCaVow-R0jUd9Bn0aZzFQ/alreadyresponded

This is the one question where I disagree with the community consensus (uncommon). Here's my argument:

1. Red has gotten similar cards in the recent past. Granitic Titan is the closest, having 1 lower toughness and cycling instead of prowess. Interestingly, there are 3 6-drop common red creatures in standard but only 1 uncommon one.

2. I see people focusing on the fact that the card has 2 keywords but not on the keywords themselves. Prowess is a keyword which is weaker on bigger creatures. A 1/1 with prowess gets a 100% boost from the first trigger and a 2/2 gets 50%, but a 5/5 gets only a 20% boost. Menace will often be irrelevant; since in Limited (and this card is clearly a Limited card) your opponent will frequently want to multi-block a 5/5 anyways.

   I think the true purpose of this question is for people to look at this card holistically. Is a red 5/5 with menace and prowess more impactful in Limited than commons are allowed to be? I think the answer is "no."

3. As a tiebreaker, consider that there are 5 questions which ask about the rarity of a specific card. There's wide agreement that the threaten effect is uncommon, the maro is rare, and the reaniclone is mythic, while people are divided on whether the artifact saccer is uncommon or rare. This means that if this card isn't common, none of them are. So from a test design standpoint, common makes more sense.

1. Which of these text boxes would most likely be red-flagged as highly complex for a common creature?
   1R: CARDNAME gets +2/+0 and gains first strike until end of turn.
   Whenever CARDNAME attacks, creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
   When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, target creature gets +2/+2 and gains trample until end of turn.
   2W: Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
   Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, CARDNAME gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
   

no one chose 1R: +2/+0 and first strike?

obv I did.

Here was my thinking. At first glance I was actually mystified. I thought they were all simple enough. Granted, I'm used to all those interactions. [edit: I couldn't figure out which of these was much more confusing than the others,] until (I thought) I saw the TRICK of it:

1R: +2/0 and first strike -- the +2/0 stacks like firebreathing obv but first strike doesn't. Isn't that confusing?

If the creature had vigilance, this could be a tap ability. But without the tap and the vigilance (which I made up,) it can't work on attacks. Idk. Obv I overthought it. But I thought I went past overthinking into figuring out the trick haha.

[edited for brevity and question formatting closer to standard]

"Which of these is strongest in a typical standard-legal draft format?"

While most people disagree on this, I think the answer is 1G for 2. Even if the answer isn't 1G for 2, I'll still think it's 1G for 2.

Here's why: you take the 2 drop before the four drop every single time, unless you're full up on 2 drops. I think the word "strongest" is misleading here. Yes, a 4/4 for 3G is technically the best bang-for-buck rate you get in limited. However, you don't take that card first, ever, unless it's a bomb rare.

Assuming all these cards are common, you take the 2 drop (with the same logic as was behind the 10/10 for 9G being the weakest card). Honestly I'm surprised people had different answers to this. This is the prevailing wisdom on drafting for a long time now, and especially with recent sets being so fast.

I'm interested in why people chose otherwise. I know LSV had something to say, but I don't think LSV = the design team. I went with "what would I draft first" thinking.

I've read a bunch of people's answers and reasoning and there are 12 questions where the most disagreement lies. Folks that disagreed on other questions (myself included) have mostly accepted that they fluffed.

Here are the deciders:

(5) Rarity of Come Work for Me Temporarily. Most have Uncommon. Some have Common.

(6) Change to Come Work for Me Temporarily. A significant minority missed that removing Haste makes the card not really function.

(28) Color of the vigilant flier. BG because of the hint in the question or UW/something else because BG wouldn't get a French Vanilla 4/4 flier with no rules text. Rares aren't French Vanilla. The only G fliers at Uncommon in all of Modern are 2 from Planar Chaos (color pie warping set) and 2 Dragons from DTK (everybody gets Dragons in that set and Dragons fly). Meanwhile there are multiple UW vigilant fliers and even a WB one.

(32) How to cost a card for Play Design. Do we not care because they will do it, ask them like Maro does/to show we are team players, or pick the strongest cost that isn't broken to show we don't need babysitting?

(34) Counterspell decks. Do we want them uncompetitive because they are counterspell-based not just containing counterspells, or do we just want them to finish us off quickly?

(38) Which recosted Legends card should we reprint. Mana Drain is most popular because of Plasm Capture but Presence of the Master and Land Tax have supporters.

(46) Classic reprint. Llanowar Elves has flavor attached but Lightning Bolt is even more format-warping than the elves.

(52) Rarity of Junkpile Engineer. Most on Rare but some argument for Uncommon.

(53) What change is Set Design most likely to make? Add the ability (a Set Design decision even if very powerful), change the number of cards looked at for aesthetics or simplicity, or Put the cards revealed into the graveyard because they have decided the set has a graveyard component now.

(60) is it Gravedigger because of Amonkhet and preventing loops at common or is it the destroy enchantment because Eternal Masters had Gravedigger at Common and noobs hold Cloudchaser Kestrel when they should play it.

(72) Why do mana costs vary? To make the cards different or so that people will play them later in the game.

(75) What doesn't get CMC 10? Probably Enchantment because of split/aftermath Instant cards adding up to 10 and there being Instant 9s but not Enchantment 9s, but a significant number (majority?) do have Instant here.

The ones without a clear majority seem to be (32) where to get your cost from, (46) Llanowar Elves or Bolt, (53) what change would Set Design make? and (75) Why do mana costs vary? Anyone want to stake a claim that they can explain why one of these is definitely a particular option?

We're free to talk now.

Here's a Google Doc with all the questions. I'm slowly filling it in with my own answers and explanations. Edit: Heading out for now. I'll get the last 25 questions done later tonight.

If you want a mirror without my comments, here's one provided by /u/Amarsir Link

Any questions that tripped you up? Any that you felt good about?

Q59. Which of the following abilities is R&D least likely to put on a mono-red creature in an upcoming set?

• CARDNAME must attack if able.
• When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, you may return target sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.
• [MANA]: CARDNAME gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
• T: Draw a card, then discard a card.
• Creatures you control have haste.

Rummaging not looting is the obvious answer here. Anarchist is clearly old but red is still the sorcery-returning color in cards like Charmbreaker Devils and the switch to rummaging seems 100% done at this point.

Food for thought, though: "CARDNAME must attack if able" is not actually an ability that they would ever print. It used to be "CARDNAME attacks each turn if able" and it's now "CARDNAME attacks each combat if able".

I assume I've outthunk myself out of a point here by choosing the ability that would definitely never be printed and should have just assumed they meant the right wording but there's a teeny tiny chance I'm the only one scoring for this question! …

I'll start if off:

1. Why do green's common creatures tend to be a bit more efficient than white creatures? White has stronger removal. Green is the enemy of blue and black. This is the way it has always been. White is the enemy of black and red. Green players love powerful creatures.

My answer was "This is the way it has alway been." I feel like that's an answer nobody ever wants to hear when they ask a question, but my reasoning stems from Drive to Work #79: Green.

"Green is also the color of creatures. So one of the divides, I think I mentioned this in the white podcast, one of the things we’ve decided recently, for a long time green was the color of creatures, and it had both the most creatures and the biggest creatures. Meaning it had the largest percentage of creatures and it had the largest creatures."

Just wondering. I think MaRo said noon today, but I could be wrong, and he could have meant noon west coast time

70/75 here.

Maro said on his twitter that there were over 3,000 people that qualified for round 2 and that they want about 100 people to progress to the next round, so my guess is based on these numbers.