Magic Deck Vortex: 2007 MDV Writers Guild Awards.

Now that 2007 is behind us, we can finally begin a new tradition here at MDV, and that is the MDV Writer’s Guild Awards.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Isn’t there already an awards system in the forums?” Yes there is, and in that system you get a vote, but in this one you don’t get a say. However, we will do our best to keep you entertained with the new addition to the MDV tradition:

These awards are handed out from the Senior Writing staff to everyone in general. We have broken the MDV community into three categories; writers, forum users, and forum admins. Each of the categories were assigned to a Senior Member and they were asked to create awards for deserving people.

So what’s the deal? Why are we doing yet another awards ceremony? Isn’t too much just too much? Yes it is. However, being a fan of controlling everything we can get our hands on, we didn’t really like the idea of not being able to fix the MDV Forum Awards, so we decided to scrap the idea and create our own that we can fix.

Unfortunately, Streetz was not at the meeting, and he posted the Forum Awards anyways, so now we get to compete instead.

Not a problem, we will win and will assimilate everything and everyone to our form and control.

…

Oh damn! I think the [Order] must have gotten to our script writer. We will have to have a conversation with them later on….

Here presenting tonight’s first group of awards is our new Lead Writer for the MDV Writer’s Guild, Tynion.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I really appreciate your support of our site and Guild. However, tonight is not about this site or the Guild. Tonight is all about the important people of this community. There are numerous people who contribute to our success each and every day, and most of you go un-noticed.

The first group of awards is for the members of the Writer’s Guild. Don’t get upset and click away just yet. We have more to follow after these awards, and who knows, you may be receiving an award tonight.

The very first award I want to hand out is the Best Article of the Year. What a tough category to begin with. We have had so many articles published each and every year, and I will admit that up until recently, I never had a chance to read them all. I needed to consult the forum and the reader feedback to give me a little help here and these are the articles that you guys seemed to like the best:

The winner of the Best Article of the Year goes to… Maleficent, with The Eternal War!

Next, we step forward and find ourselves at the Best Article Series of the Year. There have been plenty of series going about on MDV over the years, and I think this one was easy to find nominations for:

After looking again at the reader response I have determined that the readers seemed to have enjoyed them all greatly, however since Beebles’ series is always consistently good, year after year, and Streetz came out of nowhere with his series, I believe that I have to give the award for Best Article Series of the Year to John Streetz, for One Card to Rule Them All.

Before getting to the bigger awards, I want to do two awards that I feel good in giving out. First I want to give out an award for the Best New Writer. Each year we have an inevitable turn over in our writing staff. Our only true staple writers that have been here through the years are myself and Beebles, and third with Luther having been here for a little less time.

I always try to grab a new writer or two and tutor them with what I have experienced in my time dealing with the MDV Readers for the past three years. Luther was the first guy I took close to me, and I feel proud of the steps that he has taken, especially since if I were to leave; I would feel safe leaving the Guild in his hands. Last year I mentored Cashew as I felt that he was the next big thing. This year, I am proud to mention this guy as the next guy I feel good enough about to give pointers to and mentor on creating the best article for your reading enjoyment.

Next is an award for a position that is greatly overlooked by everyone. The readers have their favorite writers. The writers get all the visibility of the site and take the blame and credit for their articles. However, if you saw the original draft of these writers’ articles, you would probably not like their work so much.

Editors are very important as they clean everything up and make it all look good. It may be a bad article, but it is always clean of spelling errors and other grammatical errors as well. Therefore, it is a special award for me to give, as part of my job description is to lead the staff of editors.

… Alright, maybe not so much, but the thrill was great while it lasted. Here are your nominations:

The winner is… L....wait...first! Let me tell you why he is the winner. It is not because of what you see. It is because of what you don’t see. Any time we were in a pinch, the man would show up out of thin air and would have three articles. Every time we had a theme week, he would produce four articles (exaggerating) and would edit two others. Every single time I could not connect with a writer, this guy would.

Thank you Tynion.

You know, while MDV relies heavily on the writing staff to keep the site moving forward, the writing staff would not even have a reason for writing if it were not for the readers. There are entirely too many readers to thank individually for another successful year of growth and friendship.

However, since most of the readers do find their way into our forums and participate in conversations, contests and weekly games, we can reward a crew of readers for their efforts in the forums.

Here to hand out the awards for the Forum Achievements is Mr. Writer of the Year, Death_by_Beebles.

Thanks Tynion, Senior Staff Members. I couldn’t be more pleased to be the Writer of the Year! I’d like to thank the Academy for all their work and… well, uhm, let’s not get into my acceptance speech just yet. Enough dallying, we’ve got awards to pass out!

The first award that’s up to bat is Best Casual Deck of the Year. This is a really tough decision to make. Hundreds of decks get posted into the Casual Deck Forums every year, and I had to look through all of them. I based all of my decision making for all 35 pages worth of decks in the Casual Deck forum on whether or not Streetz added the deck to the Deck Database (DDB). If the deck made the DDB, also known as “getting DBMed,” then it was eligible for this award.

Each deck has, in my mind, a different aspect and a different view of Casual. From Cashew, we see the fun-loving tribal theme of Thallids, and it’s a great Tribal deck. It does what it’s supposed to do extremely well, and it’s got a lot of bang. Virtua Survival from Neuromancer is a Pauper deck (one of my favorite types!) and it focuses on the competitive Casual side of Casual Magic. The deck uses a great commons-only engine to fuel some amazing plays, and with only commons that’s saying a lot. The final deck is a theme deck based on the Dwarven stronghold of Khazad- dûm in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the one that gets invaded and destroyed by Orcs). Besides being Tribal and having an outside theme, Khazad-dûm also has a land destruction theme. All in all, it’s the essence of a flavor deck.

Neuromancer! It’s a real feat to put together a great deck with a limited amount of cards, especially with normally sub-par cards.

Next up we have the Best Tournament Deck of the Year award. This is another hard award to give, because in order to give the award, you have to ask the question, “What makes a good tournament deck?” Whether it’s the wins, or ingenuity, or the limitations and creativity used to build the deck, the idea is the same; pick the best. Here are my choices for Tournament Deck of the Year.

Tekkactus and PerfectCell both built budget decks, made for real life play. Samuel L. Jackson has a fully tuned tournament deck. All three decks are good, but only one deck can make it to the top.

The winner of Tournament Deck of the Year is PerfectCell. His commentary about the metagame he was working in as well as the careful deck construction brought this deck into focus for me, and allowed me, when I tested the three decks, to understand the deck better and how to play it better.

Mafia is a game best played with a bit of luck, a little charisma, and a lot of voting, and it’s part of our suite of Humor and Games forums here at Magic Deck Vortex. Mafia, for those of you who don’t know, is a game of the Mafia vs. the Townspeople. Every day in the game, Townspeople vote to lynch a person in the game (they don’t know who the Mafia members are). Every night, Mafia members kill one person. The Mafia wins if only the Mafia survives, and the Townspeople win if the Mafia dies. There are also many variations to this. For more information, check out this site.

Picking a winning Mafia player is kind of like picking the best player in a game of Dungeons and Dragons or some other role-playing game. Everyone works for a collaborative effort. However, a few names stick out for awards. Here are the nominations for Best Mafia Player of the Year.

With the Mafia award out of the way, I think I may have to do a little more explaining; what is the Humor and Games section of the forums? What is it about?

The Humor and Games section was added to the forums just over two years ago in November of 2005. As I remember, it was a hotly debated addition to the forums; the need was there, but Streetz was nervous about the amount of useless “spam” threads that would pop up, and most of the Moderator staff was wondering what would come of it. It took a while to get off the ground, and then it exploded; Mafia started, and players began playing various versions of X Card Blind – more on that later.

Mostly, the Humor and Games section is about having a good time at the MDV forums. If it’s role playing, Mafia, or random forum games you’re interested in, we have them, or can have them, if you’re willing to play them. The forum members who are most involved with the Humor and Games section got nominated for this award.

One of the many parts of Humor and Games is the aforementioned X Card Blind. The idea of it is that you can turn Magic into a game that’s completely predictable and perfectly scoreable. It turns Magic into a game of analysis; what’s the metagame going to be like, and what decks are going to be good this week? I won’t belabor the point. To learn more about X Card Blind, check out my article series.

The XCB Player of the Year award is an award that goes to one of the players who helped define the game of XCB. This goes from to the most dedicated players to the Moderators themselves. Here are my nominations.

Finally, it is my pleasure to award a most prestigious and profound award; the Forum Member of the Year award. Every person on the forums gives a piece of themselves for the rest of us to interact with, attack, and support. Some give more than most. Here’s to those people.

The winner of Forum Member of Year for 2007 is… Ryuzaki (CJS). He's devoted no small amount of time to these forums, becoming a blogger and playing a key role this year in many of the day to day workings of the forum. Congratulations.

With that, it’s time for me to depart. Check back later for my acceptance speech. It’s going to be great!

Thank you DBB.

Finally, after everything writing and reading, we have one last group of people who deserve recognition; the people who put up with the rest of us. The moderators of MDV are an overlooked group of people here at MDV. They keep us reigned in and keep us from killing each other.

Here to hand out the Administrator Awards is none other than the Website Owner, Streetz!

And here we are, toward the end of this award-giving extravaganza. As our kind and attractive host touched upon, I’m happy to be awarding some of the Administrative staff of Magic Deck Vortex with our fine MDV Writer’s Guild Awards! Wait a minute, we have a female host! Woah!?

First category up is Best Administrator! Our current Administrators include:

Wait a minute, who in the world is [news]Bot??? Scratch that from the roster – the [news]Bot is an automated “bot” that scans the web for news. Unfortunately, at some point in 2007 I disabled this feature. Why did I disable it? I found it clogging up the new posts section of the forum and honestly kind of annoying.

ButteBlues installed this feature in an effort to provide forum visitors with a quick review of all of the major headlines. Unfortunately, it would post 20-50 new posts a day. When trying to see all of the new posts in the forum, this feature caused me headaches as I wanted to see real posts, not “bot” posts.

The winner of this category is none other than Death_By_Beebles. He has remained diligent and on top of things throughout the entire year. Unfortunately, lionden_56 and ButteBlues disappear too often to really be considered. While they do their job the majority of the time, they aren’t in the forums enforcing the rules and doing the upkeep as often as DBB or myself. And I can’t nominate myself, can I? *grin*

Congrats, DBB. You deserve this award. How many awards is that for you so far? ...

Under the Administrators are the Global Moderators. Like the Administrators, they have the ability to moderate any thread anywhere in the forum. The only difference between Global Mods and Administrators is the Administrator’s ability to go into the admin panel and make changes to forum structures, permissions, etc. Global Moderators can't do this.

Our two Global Moderators include Stolin and Einsteinmonkey. Stolin is a fellow Forum [Wizards] clan member (my clan) and while I would love to give the award to him, I have to give it to Einsteinmonkey. Stolin also made a disappearance act during the latter part of 2007 whereas Einsteinmonkey, affectionately referred to as EM, has been going strong all year. While he focuses mainly in the Deck Forums and Rules forum, he keeps a keen eye on all other happenings throughout the entire vast community.

Under the Global Moderators are the normal Moderators. They moderate and look over specific forums and have the ability to close, lock, unlock, delete and edit forum posts and threads within their rule.

For humor’s sake, this category is called One Moderator to Rule Them All! By the way, thank you Tynion for the Best Series award. It was one of those things that just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks, only instead of bricks they were fluffy, comforting feathers. Ahhhh, even better than Downy fabric softener.

So the best Moderator? Mind you I'm only considering real Moderators, not the Moderators that look over private clan threads or editors in the Writers Guild. They can't be Global Moderators or Admins either. Here are the nominees:

And the winner is… Neuromancer! His dedication to the deck forums in amazing! Congrats, Neuro!

I would now give out an award to the best forum techie and owner, but there is only one of each. I am the owner, and ButteBlues is the only techie for the site. So I guess congrats to both of us! :)

While this isn't exactly related to the administrative staff of MDV, I couldn't let DBB have all of the fun. In case you weren't aware, MDV's MySpace page can be found here.

Currently MDV has about 104 friends and of these friends there a few that post comments in the MDV MySpace page. These comments are greatly appreciated and thus this award goes to the best poster on this page.

The award goes to Lord_Sage_of_Ronevia, known as Ikaruga on MySpace. He posts often and actually posts more than one phrase or sentence. Know that your comments are greatly appreciated, Lord Sage!

OK... so I can't stop there. This last, I mean really last award, goes to not a member of the site but to a website. Specifically, it goes to the best featured link of the year.

Every month I feature five different links. Speaking of which, I have to post this month's featured links, but that is besides the point. Every month there are five usually new links that I post and I really want you all to visit them. I even want you to tell me what you think of them. However, no one does that as shown in the forum thread I just linked too... But there are some links that are just awesome. Below are the nominees:

This was a truly difficult list to come up with as my original list had ten different websites in it. To get the nomination I looked for a webmaster that actually interacted with me after the featured link was posted. I wanted a link exchange. I wanted a quality site. I wanted a website that was active and not stagnant. All of these nominees did this (or had this). They all have great content and/or the site owners had great communication skills during 2007.

Particularly, MTG Pop, Cabal City and PureMTGO took the time to discuss website things with me whether it was via email or Instant Messenger. These sort of conversations were greatly appreciated and choosing the award winner for this category is going to take some serious thought.

And so I've thought it through. The winner of this category goes to PureMTGO.

The owner of this site has had numerous conversations with me over IM about the Magic Deck Vortex and ways to improve it. He has a great site, or sites really. I believe the owner of this site is a great asset to the online Magic: the Gathering community. While I feel the same about all of the websites and owners of them on the nominee list, I feel Heath, the owner of PureMTGO, has impressed me the most.

Thank you, Heath for your time and interest in Magic Deck Vortex over and above just a featured link spot. And really, thank you to the owners of all of the websites I've featured in 2007. What better way to promote a game we love than to make a website about it.

Thank you to everyone that visits Magic Deck Vortex and participates in the many facets of MDV including the MySpace page, the forums, email and the Blogs. Even if I don't reply to every email I receive, know that they are all being read. I just wish I could reply to more of them more often.

Thank you Streetz. Thanks to all who were nominated and came to the ceremony. Thank you to the guys who brought the free food in the back; it was quite tasty. And finally, thank you to everyone who played a part in MDV in 2007.

We look forward to continued success in 2008. Until next we meet. Good bye! Farewell!

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