Hello dear MECCG community,
It's been two years since the last election, and that means it is time for a new election that will define a new chapter in the Council of Elrond history.
Voting will start on January 13th, 2025, and will be open for two weeks. After that, a new charter will be formed.
We would like to invite any volunteers who think that they could do something useful for this game. Here's a list of things we've been working on for the last two years, that hopefully can serve as an example of what being a member of the Council of Elrond is about:
- Remastered Rules containing all rules into a new format with more precise language: https://www.councilofelrond.org/rules/
- A new online platform that can run into any browser, that has managed to gather players from all over the world: https://play.meccg.com/
- Organized online tournaments: https://play.meccg.com/tournaments
- Periodic ruling digests with official answers to the many rules questions that arise during games: viewforum.php?f=163
- An official card database: viewforum.php?f=186
- Updated website: https://councilofelrond.org
- Updated forum: https://councilofelrond.org/forum
- Taking care and moderating the different communication channels.
- Video tutorials on how to play the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyw-jyN6nhQ
If you want to be a candidate, please post a reply in this same thread telling more about yourself, your involvement with MECCG and your ideas for the new term. Feel free to ask any questions here or via PM.
List of candidates so far (open until January 12th):
DamienX207
CoE Elections for 2025-2027
-
DamienX207
- Council Member
- Posts: 86
- Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:53 pm
Hi all, my name is Ethan and I served on the Council of Elrond for the term that is now coming to a close. Please consider this my re-application thereof.
I believe wholeheartedly in the role that the CoE fills for the worldwide playerbase of MeCCG, and although I know all too well that this work can be grueling and the feedback sometimes equally so, I humbly believe that I can contribute enough to the Council and its playerbase that I am game to take on another term. I would stress to anyone considering nomination: please be ready to give this your all, because that's what it takes and what our community deserves!
To summarize my background:
- I started playing MeCCG in 1996, stopped a few years later, and then started playing again about 8 years ago. I'm a huge fan of Tolkien, I respect the designers of MeCCG and want to preserve their legacy as best as possible, and I honor the importance of properly stewarding this game into the future.
- I've served on nonprofit Boards of Directors in the "real world," so I have experience participating in these sorts of committees. As an example, I advocated for our current Council to publish official minutes of our meetings like a nonprofit board in order to promote transparency.
- As a member of the CoE's Rules Committee, I poured countless hours into helping create our new tournament rulebook with the clarity and precision that CoE tournament play has previously lacked, with the additional goal of preserving the framework that we had inherited from ICE and previous Councils.
- I worked on a "Beginner Rules" version of that new rulebook (which can be viewed by going to the above link and clicking the button in the upper-right corner) because I'm an ardent believer that the CoE should facilitate the game's accessibility whenever and however possible.
- Also as a member of the Rules Committee, I helped provide English proofreading and educated feedback on our many ruling digests. We had a lot of super knowledgeable people in our group of volunteers and I don't want to overshadow their insights whatsoever (we couldn't have done it without all of you!), but given the variety of native languages represented in our community, I do believe that my education as a native English speaker and my own extensive research were beneficial to our committee.
- As a member of the CoE's Administrative Committee, I pushed to create our new Council of Elrond tournament policies, evolving the original Council of Lorien policies from some 25 years ago with the accumulated knowledge that tournament play has since provided (and again, I would stress that many members of the current CoE gave input on this project!).
- And finally, also as a member of the Administrative Committee, I pushed to update the Council Charter so that it accurately represents how the CoE functions. When there was community pushback on the Charter's removal of the ratification process, I moved to update the Charter again according to the community's preferences. And based on that experience, I also proposed adding a new mechanism to remove councilmembers who aren't meeting the community's standards in the future.
I want to stress that serving the community is integral to how I view the Council of Elrond. If the community at large is vocalizing that something needs to be changed or done differently, whether in terms of the tournament rules or policies or operations or whatever else, I am personally always going to listen with an open mind and do what I can to make it happen. I don't pretend to know better than anyone else, as my fellow councilmembers will surely attest!
With that said, these would be my primary goals for a new term:
- Building off the new tournament rulebook (which covers the rules of the game itself), my foremost hope is for the Rules Committee to now take the next step of creating an online database where both players and tournament coordinators can type in any card name and immediately view all of the current rulings and clarifications for that card, without having to dig through untold numbers of digests and Usenet posts to try to piece together an answer to a card-specific question. In my head, I would love to compile something like the "Oracle" database that WotC has created for Magic: The Gathering. I do expect that a project of such magnitude would take a ton of time, but I think it would be worth it to further solidify the CoE's rules for official tournament play.
- I'm a professional video editor in the "real world," so I'd love to work with the CoE to create an official Council of Elrond video tutorial for new players to learn the game in 20 minutes or so, with top-of-the-line polish, 3D motion graphics, etc. I fully respect and support everyone who has created their own video tutorials over the years (the more, the better!), but I think my expertise could help us increase accessibility for new players even more.
- Given that the cost of physical MeCCG cards often creates a barrier to entry for new players, I would push for projects that make it easier for novices to start playing at home. Talking to some of our fellow community members, I understand that the player-run governing bodies for various other "dead" games (e.g. the Star Wars CCG) accept donations of physical cards in order to get spare commons and uncommons in the hands of new players for cheap, which I definitely think is an idea worth exploring. Other possibilities might include an automated "MPCFill"-style platform where proxies could be readily purchased online, or a web app that creates customized proxy PDFs for printing at home (or at the least hosts PDFs of the challenge decks) - of course, ensuring that any project is legal from a copyright perspective, which I happen to have experience navigating in my professional work.
- And finally, I believe strongly that a fair playing field for CoE tournaments should be expected and enforced. Now that the new tournament policies are in place, my goal would be ensuring that regular tournaments are held according to those policies so that an equitable tournament environment can be created and maintained for everyone.
In closing, thank you for your time and consideration. If you are considering nominating yourself, let me emphasize that you don't need to write as much as I just did! And thank you for the opportunity to serve on this body for the past two years. I hope that I have represented this community well. TYTY!
I believe wholeheartedly in the role that the CoE fills for the worldwide playerbase of MeCCG, and although I know all too well that this work can be grueling and the feedback sometimes equally so, I humbly believe that I can contribute enough to the Council and its playerbase that I am game to take on another term. I would stress to anyone considering nomination: please be ready to give this your all, because that's what it takes and what our community deserves!
To summarize my background:
- I started playing MeCCG in 1996, stopped a few years later, and then started playing again about 8 years ago. I'm a huge fan of Tolkien, I respect the designers of MeCCG and want to preserve their legacy as best as possible, and I honor the importance of properly stewarding this game into the future.
- I've served on nonprofit Boards of Directors in the "real world," so I have experience participating in these sorts of committees. As an example, I advocated for our current Council to publish official minutes of our meetings like a nonprofit board in order to promote transparency.
- As a member of the CoE's Rules Committee, I poured countless hours into helping create our new tournament rulebook with the clarity and precision that CoE tournament play has previously lacked, with the additional goal of preserving the framework that we had inherited from ICE and previous Councils.
- I worked on a "Beginner Rules" version of that new rulebook (which can be viewed by going to the above link and clicking the button in the upper-right corner) because I'm an ardent believer that the CoE should facilitate the game's accessibility whenever and however possible.
- Also as a member of the Rules Committee, I helped provide English proofreading and educated feedback on our many ruling digests. We had a lot of super knowledgeable people in our group of volunteers and I don't want to overshadow their insights whatsoever (we couldn't have done it without all of you!), but given the variety of native languages represented in our community, I do believe that my education as a native English speaker and my own extensive research were beneficial to our committee.
- As a member of the CoE's Administrative Committee, I pushed to create our new Council of Elrond tournament policies, evolving the original Council of Lorien policies from some 25 years ago with the accumulated knowledge that tournament play has since provided (and again, I would stress that many members of the current CoE gave input on this project!).
- And finally, also as a member of the Administrative Committee, I pushed to update the Council Charter so that it accurately represents how the CoE functions. When there was community pushback on the Charter's removal of the ratification process, I moved to update the Charter again according to the community's preferences. And based on that experience, I also proposed adding a new mechanism to remove councilmembers who aren't meeting the community's standards in the future.
I want to stress that serving the community is integral to how I view the Council of Elrond. If the community at large is vocalizing that something needs to be changed or done differently, whether in terms of the tournament rules or policies or operations or whatever else, I am personally always going to listen with an open mind and do what I can to make it happen. I don't pretend to know better than anyone else, as my fellow councilmembers will surely attest!
With that said, these would be my primary goals for a new term:
- Building off the new tournament rulebook (which covers the rules of the game itself), my foremost hope is for the Rules Committee to now take the next step of creating an online database where both players and tournament coordinators can type in any card name and immediately view all of the current rulings and clarifications for that card, without having to dig through untold numbers of digests and Usenet posts to try to piece together an answer to a card-specific question. In my head, I would love to compile something like the "Oracle" database that WotC has created for Magic: The Gathering. I do expect that a project of such magnitude would take a ton of time, but I think it would be worth it to further solidify the CoE's rules for official tournament play.
- I'm a professional video editor in the "real world," so I'd love to work with the CoE to create an official Council of Elrond video tutorial for new players to learn the game in 20 minutes or so, with top-of-the-line polish, 3D motion graphics, etc. I fully respect and support everyone who has created their own video tutorials over the years (the more, the better!), but I think my expertise could help us increase accessibility for new players even more.
- Given that the cost of physical MeCCG cards often creates a barrier to entry for new players, I would push for projects that make it easier for novices to start playing at home. Talking to some of our fellow community members, I understand that the player-run governing bodies for various other "dead" games (e.g. the Star Wars CCG) accept donations of physical cards in order to get spare commons and uncommons in the hands of new players for cheap, which I definitely think is an idea worth exploring. Other possibilities might include an automated "MPCFill"-style platform where proxies could be readily purchased online, or a web app that creates customized proxy PDFs for printing at home (or at the least hosts PDFs of the challenge decks) - of course, ensuring that any project is legal from a copyright perspective, which I happen to have experience navigating in my professional work.
- And finally, I believe strongly that a fair playing field for CoE tournaments should be expected and enforced. Now that the new tournament policies are in place, my goal would be ensuring that regular tournaments are held according to those policies so that an equitable tournament environment can be created and maintained for everyone.
In closing, thank you for your time and consideration. If you are considering nominating yourself, let me emphasize that you don't need to write as much as I just did! And thank you for the opportunity to serve on this body for the past two years. I hope that I have represented this community well. TYTY!
Hello guys:
I'm Felipe (Fisilva), current member of the CoE, and I'd like to be a candidate for the next period.
I'm a proud member of the very small and isolated chilean meccg community (we call ourselves "The Council of the Bay of Belfalas", given there are almost no people here anyway
)
Have been playing online since the pandemic, and I think I have played about 90% of the tournaments available in the spanish-speaking community in that period. And have participated in all available tournaments in the new play.meccg.com platform (ended in 5th place in the online-Worlds!). So, overall, I think I have a good grasp of the competitive aspect of the game by now.
In the CoE, I have collaborated in the Public relations committee, in the Administrative committee and in the Rules committee.
If you choose me, I'd like to focus on the ruling aspect, and been able to provide support for the players in that area
Felipe
I'm Felipe (Fisilva), current member of the CoE, and I'd like to be a candidate for the next period.
I'm a proud member of the very small and isolated chilean meccg community (we call ourselves "The Council of the Bay of Belfalas", given there are almost no people here anyway
) Have been playing online since the pandemic, and I think I have played about 90% of the tournaments available in the spanish-speaking community in that period. And have participated in all available tournaments in the new play.meccg.com platform (ended in 5th place in the online-Worlds!). So, overall, I think I have a good grasp of the competitive aspect of the game by now.
In the CoE, I have collaborated in the Public relations committee, in the Administrative committee and in the Rules committee.
If you choose me, I'd like to focus on the ruling aspect, and been able to provide support for the players in that area
Felipe