Deckbuilding Competition: Elelections

[Aves]

Elelections
One may rely on the soundness of a Death Elemental's Tax Policy

Rules

• Create a deck to represent an elemental Political Party or Faction!
• A catchy campaign slogan with a strong ideological platform is highly recommended. Why should elementals support your party?
• You should be able to justify why your deck uses the cards it does, and how they fit into the party platform or faction goals.
• A good political party or faction is capable of winning over the populace. At a minimum, it should be able to defeat Elders(AI3). Justification or support of this requirement is encouraged.
• An incomplete list of governing ethos that may be useful and in no particular order from Stellaris that your party may hold a preference for:
  
  • Authoritarianism vs Egalitarianism
  • Xenophobia vs Xenophilia
  • Materialism vs Spiritualism
  • Militarism vs Pacifism
• Post your submission in this thread!
• ONE submission per person.
• Your submission must fit inside one post.

The winner will receive the following forum award icon, as well as a spot in the glorious Hall of Fame!

Thanks to CleanOnion for providing this amazing icon!

You have no time remaining.

[Aves]

Spoiler for Example Submission:

The Holy Order of the Small by Good Things Happen to Those Who Wait!

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vq 4vq 58p 58p 5bu 5f1 5f1 5f1 5j2 5j2 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5lf 5od 5od 5od 5od 5ri 620 8pq

[Description of how evil will be smited if our party's goals are met.]

[Description of how Ai3s get rekt]

[kaempfer13]

I feel like all of the more recent competitions have a pretty high entrylevel; as in you have to put a lot of thought into your base concept already in order to get a decent submission, if you take a very basic idea and continuosly refine it instead you are going to face conflicts pretty soon.
Why is that a problem? It means that many early drafts will have to be scrapped entirely and after some time the potential contestant may just give up, submitting nothing. Also its offputting at first if you cant find a good starting point. Before you can get to the meat of this challenge (the deckbuilding) you have to answer all of the following:
1. What do most of the parties represent?
- If they represent an element, why would someone not in that element ever vote for them?
- If they dont how do they fit into this world? I think it has beeen established that the world of elements has been split up into realms representing each element, so only parties representing one or more elements seem to make sense
2. What is the ethos of your party?
This is more or less a 5parter: The 4 scales you have given (with potential for more) + the question of what kind of people you would convince with such an ethos.
3. What is its name?
Always a tricky question to me, but easier for some others.

And only now can you start.

Feel free to steal use ideas that I may have mentioned somewhere, it will probably be difficult enough to get a lot of submissions.

Edit: smaller problems: Pacifism can only be represented with stalls and even those have the tendency to kill everything (not very pacifist) and not run (many) creatures, which would usually be nice to represent your people. Most pacifism themed decks will have an unfair disadvantage vs AI3.

[CleanOnion]

Personally I disagree with this sentiment and I'm going to attempt to explain why. It's too long a post for a competition thread so it goes in a spoiler.

Spoiler for Hidden:

I feel like all of the more recent competitions have a pretty high entrylevel; as in you have to put a lot of thought into your base concept already in order to get a decent submission, if you take a very basic idea and continuosly refine it instead you are going to face conflicts pretty soon.
Why is that a problem? It means that many early drafts will have to be scrapped entirely and after some time the potential contestant may just give up, submitting nothing. Also its offputting at first if you cant find a good starting point.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a high entry level. If you have a competition where you don't really have to think about your entry, is that a competition worth submitting for?

I guess ultimately it boils down to how creative you are and/or how much time you're willing to put in. Some people are gonna see this competition, think of an idea immediately, and finish up their submission within an hour. I know that it's going to take me at least a couple of days of background thinking to think of a good idea.

kaempfer, I challenge you to this: redesign this competition, but lower the entry level down to something that you'd be more comfortable with!

Before you can get to the meat of this challenge (the deckbuilding) you have to answer all of the following:

Personally, I'd say that the "meat" of this challenge is the questions that you've already laid out.

1. What do most of the parties represent?
- If they represent an element, why would someone not in that element ever vote for them?
- If they dont how do they fit into this world? I think it has beeen established that the world of elements has been split up into realms representing each element, so only parties representing one or more elements seem to make sense

Assuming your world is divided into 12 discrete sections with 1 political party controlling each, it seems to be that each party would have a dictator-like hold over that element. The great thing about writing stuff like this is that you get to assume whatever you want. Maybe some elements are like that, but maybe some are in a free democracy. Maybe the world isn't split up at all. The only canon content is what's in the game and what Zanz has said. I can't speak for the latter, but there's no political parties in the former, so you get to do what you want.

If you assume that no party would produce a campaign - ie no submission for this competition - then that assumption/scenario maybe isn't right for this competition

2. What is the ethos of your party?
This is more or less a 5parter: The 4 scales you have given (with potential for more) + the question of what kind of people you would convince with such an ethos.

I'm pretty sure these are just examples of the political viewpoint your party could hold.

3. What is its name?
Always a tricky question to me, but easier for some others.

Okay fair enough, you're not wrong here

Edit: smaller problems: Pacifism can only be represented with stalls and even those have the tendency to kill everything (not very pacifist) and not run (many) creatures, which would usually be nice to represent your people. Most pacifism themed decks will have an unfair disadvantage vs AI3.

Nobody said the deck has to win

[kaempfer13]

My responses  coloured in the spoiler

Personally I disagree with this sentiment and I'm going to attempt to explain why. It's too long a post for a competition thread so it goes in a spoiler.

Spoiler for Hidden:

I feel like all of the more recent competitions have a pretty high entrylevel; as in you have to put a lot of thought into your base concept already in order to get a decent submission, if you take a very basic idea and continuosly refine it instead you are going to face conflicts pretty soon.
Why is that a problem? It means that many early drafts will have to be scrapped entirely and after some time the potential contestant may just give up, submitting nothing. Also its offputting at first if you cant find a good starting point.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a high entry level. If you have a competition where you don't really have to think about your entry, is that a competition worth submitting for?
Ideally a competition allows people of all skillevels and lazynesslevels to accomplish something and then allows them to improve indefinitely. In this case the more basic submissions simply dont work out. If the only thing that matters is the winner I guess thats perfectly fine (it does have the advantage of giving clearer criteria for a good submission than a more basic challenge), but it was my understanding that forum competitions were also about involving the community as much as possible and get people to try something that they may not be that comfortable yet with (which wont happen as much if you set the bar for minimum requirements higher)

I guess ultimately it boils down to how creative you are and/or how much time you're willing to put in. Some people are gonna see this competition, think of an idea immediately, and finish up their submission within an hour. I doubt thatI know that it's going to take me at least a couple of days of background thinking to think of a good idea.

kaempfer, I challenge you to this: redesign this competition, but lower the entry level down to something that you'd be more comfortable with!
Simply "build a deck to represent a political party" would have sufficed imo

Before you can get to the meat of this challenge (the deckbuilding) you have to answer all of the following:

Personally, I'd say that the "meat" of this challenge is the questions that you've already laid out.
I suppose this is my real issue after all; this feels less about deckbuilding than thematics. I don't really want to miss out on deckbuilding comps as they should play to my strengths and will probably gather something eventually. But it feels like 90% of my efforts will go into the concept while the actual deck is just icing

1. What do most of the parties represent?
- If they represent an element, why would someone not in that element ever vote for them?
- If they dont how do they fit into this world? I think it has beeen established that the world of elements has been split up into realms representing each element, so only parties representing one or more elements seem to make sense

Assuming your world is divided into 12 discrete sections with 1 political party controlling each, it seems to be that each party would have a dictator-like hold over that element. The great thing about writing stuff like this is that you get to assume whatever you want. Maybe some elements are like that, but maybe some are in a free democracy. Maybe the world isn't split up at all. The only canon content is what's in the game and what Zanz has said. I can't speak for the latter, but there's no political parties in the former, so you get to do what you want.

If you assume that no party would produce a campaign - ie no submission for this competition - then that assumption/scenario maybe isn't right for this competition
The world split would become canon with elements 1.4. Thankfully for this competition 1.4 wont be out by the end of it (seems like a safe guess at least). Of course there is still the option that not all people of an element vote for the same party just like not (absolutely) all bavarians in germany vote for CSU even though thats more or less their local party. I will probably make a party based on either spiritual or material elements so that I can get 2 checkmarks off with that decision alone, underworld is also an interesting option (could either be like the pirates or the democrats).

2. What is the ethos of your party?
This is more or less a 5parter: The 4 scales you have given (with potential for more) + the question of what kind of people you would convince with such an ethos.

I'm pretty sure these are just examples of the political viewpoint your party could hold.

3. What is its name?
Always a tricky question to me, but easier for some others.

Okay fair enough, you're not wrong here

Edit: smaller problems: Pacifism can only be represented with stalls and even those have the tendency to kill everything (not very pacifist) and not run (many) creatures, which would usually be nice to represent your people. Most pacifism themed decks will have an unfair disadvantage vs AI3.

Nobody said the deck has to win

A good political party or faction is capable of winning over the populace. At a minimum, it should be able to defeat Elders(AI3). Justification or support of this requirement is encouraged.

[Aves]

Thanks for the feedback, kaempfer13 and CleaniOnion! You guys sure have a lot of it! I almost think this might go better in the feedback thread, but I guess it works here too. In order to avoid a massive spoiler tree, I'll just post my points here. I may request an admin move this to the feedback topic in the future, but for now I might as well continue discussion.

Regarding a high entry level: The base duration of a competition was increased from 1 week to 2 weeks some time ago. In my view, there's no excuse not to make competitions that have the potential to use up more of that time, since otherwise that's time when you're not thinking about competitions at all. Indeed, Onion's 'slap something together in an hour' example isn't farfetched at all. I've personally done that for a lot of my own submissions-- I rarely ever go past a second draft, and that example submission was thrown together in around 10 minutes after I made the OP (wasn't in the draft).

Those who want to make minimal effort or minimum time-intensive submissions can still do so. Nothing says that your justification has to be in an essay-- you can imply something obvious with your deck build, or you can put in a screenshot of you defeating a false god(or other opponent), or you can write a short paragraph describing your deck's strategy, something that people have stated they missed from some of the previous comps. In short, how you make the pitch is up to you.

Regarding set lore: There is none. 1.4 with elemental kingdoms might be a popular one, but it's certainly not the only viable path. Even if it was set lore, you can simply call it the future, or the past, or an alternate reality elements. Check out the writing section! People have made some pretty neat stories based in elements-inspired settings.

 For some ideas: You could have something like The Legend of Korra's Republic City, with different elements coming together as one citystate. You could have something like PathofExile's Oriath, holy crusaders taking slaves and oppressing the lesser cultures in the name of holiness. Your party might be a resistance group to these invaders, or they might be defectors trying to form a stable government to collaborate. You could form a party trying to ban alchemical substances in the name of purity. There's many more options, but I don't want to put too many ideas out

Regarding ethos: The ethos aren't restrictive, and certainly aren't a complete list. They're a possible starting point, but you could also just slap together a deck and then try to interpret that as a party, forming that around the deck instead ot the other way around.

Regarding the Ai3 rule: A minimum competency rule is generally something put in place to be unthematic, not more thematic. As stated above, how you choose to justify your deck beating Ai3 is up to you. I can lower it to AI2 if you really want, but I think Ai3 is low enough a benchmark as it is. Keep in mind that ultimately, it's not about how well you beat it, but rather that you can do so at all. You don't necessarily get bonus points for crushing it vs barely winning.

[Espithel]

Personally I disagree with this sentiment and I'm going to attempt to explain why. It's too long a post for a competition thread so it goes in a spoiler.

Spoiler for Hidden:

I feel like all of the more recent competitions have a pretty high entrylevel; as in you have to put a lot of thought into your base concept already in order to get a decent submission, if you take a very basic idea and continuosly refine it instead you are going to face conflicts pretty soon.
Why is that a problem? It means that many early drafts will have to be scrapped entirely and after some time the potential contestant may just give up, submitting nothing. Also its offputting at first if you cant find a good starting point.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a high entry level. If you have a competition where you don't really have to think about your entry, is that a competition worth submitting for?

I guess ultimately it boils down to how creative you are and/or how much time you're willing to put in. Some people are gonna see this competition, think of an idea immediately, and finish up their submission within an hour. I know that it's going to take me at least a couple of days of background thinking to think of a good idea.

kaempfer, I challenge you to this: redesign this competition, but lower the entry level down to something that you'd be more comfortable with!

Regarding a high entry level: The base duration of a competition was increased from 1 week to 2 weeks some time ago. In my view, there's no excuse not to make competitions that have the potential to use up more of that time, since otherwise that's time when you're not thinking about competitions at all. Indeed, Onion's 'slap something together in an hour' example isn't farfetched at all. I've personally done that for a lot of my own submissions-- I rarely ever go past a second draft, and that example submission was thrown together in around 10 minutes after I made the OP (wasn't in the draft).

Both of these responses miss Kaempfer's point. A high entry level is not the same as a high skill ceiling - It's the difference between who can make a submission and who can make the submission well. You want a low entry level and a high skill ceiling.

Kaempfer's argument is that a high entry level deters people because it requires extra steps to submit something valid, and far more to submit something of quality. This is a pretty valid concern - the question is if this submission is of a high entry level.
I'd argue it is, but not enough to be so much of a detriment; if I had to make it simpler, I'd remove the deckbuilding component because it's dissonant and difficult to fit with a political pamphlet - why is this not a writing challenge? Because yellow journalism? Unlike that challenge, this one is actually fun.

This is why card design comps are the best comps and should happen more often - even if the task is garbage, because making cards is inherently fun, you're allowed to screw up and make poor tasks.

Meanwhile, a poor deckbuilding/writing comp is a wasted fortnight.
(This one's okay)

Also, no, Aves. You didn't actually slap it together in 10 minutes, because you didn't write a description of the deck's politics or how it beats AI3.

[Aves]

A low entry level refers to the amount of time/effort it takes to submit something half-decent, right? My response was that that has not changed significantly. You can still throw something together in a very short amount of time and come out with something worthy of submission/consideration, as my example shows. And if your competitors step up their game and have lots of extra bells and whistles that make their submission more appealing? Then something's going right, because increased effort should be incentivized.

The comparison to YJ is a bit unexpected, though I see where you're coming from with that. I was thinking of this being compared to Hierarchy, with modifications from feedback (not just the thread, though if you want to get your point across, it helps to have it in there) taken like encouraging descriptions for why/how the cards in a deck work without making them mandatory, incorporating writing aspects to the competition without forcibly making it a writing competition, etc.

[Espithel]

I referenced YJ because it was the competition beforehand. Two writing competitions in a row would be a bit daft.

[russianspy1234]

Lake Sword-based Autocracy

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5io 5jm 5jm 5jm 5ld 5ld 5lf 5lf 5lh 5ll 5ll 5ll 5ll 5ll 5ll 5m6 5m6 5m6 6rk 6rk 6rk 8pq

Spoiler for The Explanation:

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!"

"If we assume that by 'strange,' you mean that their motives and decision processes are opaque to us, sword-distribution-as-election has one significant benefit over democracy, especially democracies like what we have in the Unusually Square Alliance. Here, becoming a major officeholder (think President, Senator, or Supreme Court judge) requires a lifelong, single-minded commitment to the pursuit of power. You have to raise your profile through smaller elections, you have to build your own fortune or raise a huge amount of electrum, you have to endure lots of humiliation, both in the form of press scrutiny and sucking up to people you don't like because of their influence or wealth.

What this leads to is an environment where only people who are truly power-hungry would ever end up in our most powerful governmental roles. And hunger for power often goes hand-in-hand with very undesirable traits for rulers.

Lake Sword-based autocracy, however, because of the 'strangeness' of the sword distributors, can't be gamed in the same way, and so results in something more like a daily spin, where people are chosen for government irrespective of their desire to be powerful. They would also choose them irrespective of their qualifications, but I think, if you look at our last three leaders, you can find at least 50% of the country who thinks each of them was totally unqualified, so it's not like democracy is knocking it out of the park there.

Now, your question leaves the door open to only using the sword distribution as the 'basis' for the system of government, but not the end-all, be-all. You could set up a system of checks and balances, whereby the sword recipients pass and enforce laws, but those laws are able to be vetoed by a representative body or even a council of Elders.

We could make it work."

Original source includes references to real world politics.

[ARTHANASIOS]

Create a deck to represent an elemental Political Party or Faction!

The Draconic Union

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6tv 711 748 77b 7ad 7af 7ag 7di 7gt 7jq 7mv 7q6 7t5 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80d 80f 8pu

A catchy campaign slogan with a strong ideological platform is highly recommended. Why should elementals support your party?

"Our Blood is Draconic
Our Religion is Draconic
Our Party is Draconic"
Nitodix, Jade Dragon High Councilor & Propaganda Leader

"Dear Dragons and Dragon-like creatures. Our time has come! The time to rise up and demand our draconic rights. The time to stand up and support our bloodline. The time to wake up and vote The Draconic Union!"
Scotasia, Ivory Dragon High Councilor & Campaign Leader

"Why should the elementals vote for them? Isn't it obvious? Look how many times the Dragons have served the elementals in their OTK decks, stall-breakers or even pure rushes!"
Ike, Leaf Dragon & The Draconic Union Supporter

You should be able to justify why your deck uses the cards it does, and how they fit into the party platform or faction goals.

The 12 Dragons represent the Draconic High Council, which holds the highest power within the party and it includes a single Dragon from each one of the twelve elements. The Leaf Dragon and the Elite Cockatrice represent the dragon-like creatures that are not pure dragons but still have some draconic blood running through their veins (in case you didn't know, Cockatrices are indeed half-dragon creatures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice). The Phase Shields represent the Draconic belief that they originally came from another dimension, as well as the habit of their political party to Stall with its bureaucracy. Quantum Towers represent the vast wealth that the Dragons possess.

All of the cards are Upgraded due to the elitism of the Dragons.
The Mark is Aether to remind the Dragons where they came from (The Draconic Union believes that all of the dragons came from another dimension) and where they hope to return (they also believe that when a Dragon dies, if the good deeds were more than the evil ones, his/her soul returns to the dimension they originally came and lives there for the eternity). For the dragonkind, good deeds are building lairs, hoarding treasures and participating in the OTK decks of ambitious elementals. On the other hand, evil deeds are betrayal (especially one of your blood), murder (especially if the victim was a Dragon) and not voting The Draconic Union!

A good political party or faction is capable of winning over the populace. At a minimum, it should be able to defeat Elders(AI3). Justification or support of this requirement is encouraged.

The deck/party is able to defeat the Elders(AI3) because:
1st: My grandma can beat Elders!
2nd: It is not even a fair comparison; we compare upped meta with unupped one!
3rd: We have screenshots!

Spoiler for screenshots:

An incomplete list of governing ethos that may be useful and in no particular order from Stellaris that your party may hold a preference for:
Authoritarianism vs Egalitarianism
Xenophobia vs Xenophilia
Materialism vs Spiritualism
Militarism vs Pacifism

* The Draconic Union supports Authoritarianism to the core. The whole party is ruled by the Draconic High Council and its word is rule.
* The supporters of The Draconic Union are mostly Xenophobic, believing strongly to the elitism of the Draconic race over the other lesser races. Moreover, there is a secret sect that hides well within The Draconic Union political party known as Pure Bloodline. The Pure Bloodline extremists believe that only the true dragons should exists and view both Cockatrices and Leaf Dragons like half-blood maggots, worthy only to extinct. The Draconic High Council strongly denies any relations with Pure Bloodline, but some half-dragons believe otherwise.
* Dragons view themselves as Spiritual creatures, so does The Draconic Union; they came from another spiritual dimension, they carry their highly spiritual agendas and they are quite religious worshiping many Draconic deities. However, to the eyes of the rest of the races, they are Materialistic to the core. They build their huge and expensive lairs, they hoard their mythic treasures and then they claim how spiritual they are!
* The Draconic Union used to be quite Militaristic in the past. However and in spite of actually supporting Oligarchy, due to its desire to participate in democratic elections in several democratic elemental realms, they have abandoned the old-fashioned war-like attitude of theirs and today they tend towards pacifism in order to achieve their goals.

[Manuel]

this is just for the lol i don't wanna offend no one

Hover over cards for details, click for permalink

Deck import code : [Select]

5fk 5fk 5fk 5fk 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i4 5ig 5ig 5ig 5ig 5io 5io 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 7dm 7dm 7dm 8po

Spoiler for Hidden:

can beat ai3 very ez https://s27.postimg.org/4lkg6rw0j/HWP-h_DXh_Tv_Wy9v_Hp7n_Dn_Qg.png

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/ pretty much this is a political party composed by feminist women against trump

red nymph: triggered feminist woman against trump's ideas
water nymph: adept to the feminist propaganda
nymph tears: because even the strongest women are fragile inside
explosions: a lot of angry women can really be noisy
water pends/pillars: future new feminists

don't vote for trump 2k20

i am a bad person ik