Some words from the Judges' Panel (Note: these are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. I do not speak for the other judges)
Brawl Round 1 Expectations
Royalty/King/Queen’s Speech – I want to see some confidence and importance, humorous bragging about yourself will be considered a positive factor. This is also a speech by a king, so odd twists of rhetoric would certainly be in place, and casual use of rhetorical devices would improve my opinion of your entry if used successfully.
Bard/Assemble the Troops – I expect to see something with a more serious tone here, humorous approaches can work, but an overly goofy result will cause some decrease in this voter’s opinion. I think that a non-visual “poster” could certainly work, but is neither preferred nor disfavored (by me).
Crusader/Gather the Team – I expect to see decks that are creature-heavy, and I expect at least a brief explanation of how your deck represents your/a team. The hypothetical gathered team to fight the dragon does not have to specifically represent the members of your brawl team. If your deck isn’t creature-heavy, I will have a hard time choosing it without a good explanation. I expect a deck that is at least somewhat playable and could at least beat AI3s (generally, not any specific AI3) 50% of the time (statistics/simulator not required or expected, just using that as a baseline standard for viability). Beyond that threshold of viability, good explanations and cool representation matter more than the actual power level of the deck. Originality matters too, and a deck that feels like someone just copy-pasted out of their BL decklist will not feel like interesting representation.
Enchanter/Something Like This – Tell me a story! In this task, I want to see a story represented in a card as well as possible. A card with reasonable balance and interesting gameplay are baseline factors that will cause cards not meeting them to have a hard time obtaining my vote, but an interesting concept and story will be the ultimate deciding factor for me.
Wizard/Scribe Combo Task – I want to see classic fantasy given a bit of a twist. If you can set me up with expectations about where your story is going based on the way fantasy stories typically go, and then surprise me without it feeling like the twist was just pulled out of thin air, you’re well on your way to a high mark from me. I care about the quality of the writing, but I care more about the quality of the idea.
Bonus task – It’s hard to quantify what I do and don’t like in icons, but I’ll say my personal rankings of the icons from the provided examples: 3>(4)>4>2>(5)>5>1
