The Gardener's Gazette, edition 38

Garden Insight | Winners of the Month | Monthly Contest Update

Garden Insight
by Giovanniland

Welcome to our monthly Garden Insight, this time about the month of August 2023! This piece has the purpose of helping both Gardeners and guests to keep themselves informed on what happened here recently.

Although the month started quieter than usual, activity picked up with regular conversations about many card topics, including the Card Questions of the Week. The first one of the month regarded Gardeners' preferred method of transferring bank, a very important task for those who card farm regularly so all the bank can be moved to their main nations. I asked about some details, for example whether they used one or different cards, the amount of bank transferred each time, and so on, which invited a host of different answers from many people. Another question was about people's favorite legendaries and why, including all of the three seasons—reasons often cited were the flag and theme of the card. Last but not least, the final prompt for this month was to ask which nations having no card in any of the seasons did Gardeners wish could have one already! This question received diverse answers such as one's own puppets, other players people had nice experiences with but left before the next season happened, and funnily puppets of legendary card nations that could qualify for the status too, so the user would control two legendaries.

In the middle of the month, the 37th Gazette was published, featuring not only the usual articles but also the highly-anticipated results of the Cards in Real Life Contest that happened in July! Ostrovskiy, Aerilia, and Radicalania respectively ranked first, second and third for this artistic contest that required Gardeners to depict the game's trading cards in real life scenes. Meanwhile, the next event after that one was the 4th Collection Bracket, which had a participation of ten Gardeners and merits a detailed article about it later in this edition of the Gazette. In summary, the nations of Anjan Kloss, Dr Hooves, East Chimore, Islands Of Ventro, Mikeswill, Ostrovskiy, Panagouge, Super Awesome Fun Times, The Bank of Nation States, and Yodle all participated, and the collections submitted by Chimore, Dr Hooves, Ostro and Yodle were those advancing enough to receive legendary card prizes.

Besides the Greenhouse, other channels continue to have reasonable activity! In the Toolshed, one can see by looking at the spreadsheets shared that collecting data about the change of deck value, whether about one's own deck or a broader comparison of different people, has become common recently. Furthermore, although not discussed in this channel specifically, the card community has had to adapt to some script changes to the site, which affected for example the famous tool for card farming GotIssues, requiring edits so it could return to being rules-compliant but also unfortunately debuffing its speed as a result. Meanwhile, for some good news, the Garden Displays saw the announcement declaring the completion of the new largest finished collections in the entire site! Dr Hooves, through their puppet Dune Cat, completed the Season 3 Uncommon collection which is over four times larger than previous holders of the title, a truly impressive endeavor that they also chose as the entry for the aforementioned card bracket.

Last but not least, it's time to acknowledge everyone who has joined since the last Gazette was published. Welcome to the three newest Gardeners Spratly Islands, Yodle and Mlakhavia, may their harvests give great fruits!

Winners of the Month
by Giovanniland

Welcome to the giveaway review for the month of August, both official and unofficial! For the former, a total of thirteen happened throughout the month which is one more than July. Rewards were plentiful, including Season 3 cards like Greater Eireann, which is uncommon because our storage EpLeHo has much more of their Season 2 counterparts.

In regards to winners, there were no double wins, unlike July when Zeckorin was lucky enough to win twice. Despite several inactive people being removed from the rosters in the late August purge, the amount of Gardeners registered for giveaways is still very high (60), meaning that here is also statistically less chance for such happenings. You can see which thirteen Gardeners won a giveaway last month below, congratulations to everyone who won either a Legendary card or an Epic package!

In regards to Fauzjhia's giveaways, plenty of Gardeners earned legendaries during the month, especially due to the rule that removes recent winners from the list for more variety. The following table with the winners includes not only regular giveaways throughout the month, but also the multiple giveaways at the end of each month, in which 10% of the stack is given away. An astonishing total of 35 Gardeners, one more than last month, earned a legendary card from one of these giveaways—congrats to all the winners!

Monthly Contest Results and Update
by Giovanniland

The final article of this edition will talk about the monthly Garden contests, a key activity where many members participate. After the previous month's Cards in Real Life won by Ostrovskiy, August saw the 4th Collection Bracket happen! Gardeners had a ten-day submission period to link me one collection that they owned either in their main nation or puppets.

After the submission period ended, the bracket was housed in the #collection-bracket Discord channel open only to Gardeners as usual. There were 10 entries which is an increase in comparison to the last collection bracket's eight participants, and I appreciate it! These ten entries were divided into two groups of five cards each, and Gardeners then could vote for at most three of them in each group. The placement of each card in the groups was important not only to determine who would continue to the knockout stage of each group, because the bottom collection was to be eliminated, but also because different placements would mean different knockout stage matches. Unfortunately, Mike and Ventro were unlucky to have their collections as the least voted in Group A and B respectively, while Dr Hooves and Ostro were the leaders of the respective groups.

Then we proceeded to the quarterfinal matches, which happened between either the first place of one group and the second place of the other, or the second place of one group and third place of the other. The largest collection, by Dr Hooves, met the smallest collection, by Rewan, and the former showed their strength with a 21-6 win. Similarly one-sided were the match between Ostro and Anjan Kloss's collections, wtih a score of 24-5, and the one featuring Yodle and The Bank of Nation States with almost the same result, 24-4. The closest match in this stage featured Chimore's Concord regional collection on one side and SAFT's self-referential cards display, the former being chosen by a majority of Gardeners 19-10.

If the quarterfinals were seen as not much exciting due to the big gaps between collections in a match, then this changed in later stages of the event. The Rarity Derby between Dr Hooves' uncommons and Ostro's ultra-rares, although resulting in a convincing 23-9 win for the green-colored cards, was commented for the two collections' similarity. This was unlike the other side of the bracket, which saw a very close contest between Chimore and Yodle's collections! Each entry claimed the lead several times, while in many other times a draw could be seen, leading to comments of Gardeners excited to find out who would win. The final result was 15-14 for Chimore, who advanced into the final. This meant that Yodle would dispute third place with the other semifinalist, Ostro, leading to another exciting duel full of ties and lead changes—this time it was Yodle who would be given the bronze medal after another score with a difference of one, 14-13. Meanwhile, in the final, Chimore's collection put up a good fight but ultimately was not a match for the winner, Dr Hooves' Uncommons, who finished 17-10.

Following the end of the bracket, and because of the close result for third place, it was decided by me that all four best collections would receive Season 3 legendary prizes! Dr Hooves was gifted a high-value Wrapper card, followed by East Chimore's prize, a copy of Zwangzug's card, and the close third- and fourth-place finishers Ostrovskiy and Yodle receiving a copy of Kindjal and Kaigi respectively (a fun fact is that Kindjal was found by the EpLeHo nation itself some time before when casually opening packs). The leaderboard of collection brackets thus features Vylixan with two wins, Apexiala with one, and now Dr Hooves with one as well.

Furthermore, we also announce the next monthly contest in this Gazette edition. Continuing the rotation between popular-vote and judged contests, for this month our monthly contest is the 2nd Card Design Contest! We are reviving this old event that once appeared in the 9th Gazette, at the time referring to players' thoughts on future Season 3 designs, into a new edition for Season 4 cards.

Therefore, in this event you need to think about how the future Season 4 cards should look, come up with a design that you think depicts it well, and optionally explain why do you think it is a good design. Of course, this contest is run by players and those designs will not be used by the game admins, but it serves as a good artwork and prediction exercise. The winner will also receive a shiny legendary card as always! Here are the rules:

1. Designs can be either drawn digitally or by hand.

2. Every submission must follow Card Gardens and NationStates rules.

3. Only one entry may be submitted per Gardener, and it must be a new concept if you participated in the previous edition.

4. Submissions must be sent by telegram or Discord DM to Giovanniland, closing at 23:59 UTC on October 8th.

5. Please send a link to your submission, preferably hosted on an image-hosting site like Imgur, although the upload feature can also be used if sending through Discord.

6. The winner will win a shiny legendary card, and additional prizes may be awarded if there are many entries.