Testing Guidelines

1. Our testing process is pretty flexible. You're free to test however you find most convenient and personally effective, be it leagues, Cockatrice, or even just watching streams. However, you should share your findings with the group, via spreadsheets or Discord posts. The whole value of the team is that the whole is more than the sum of our parts, but that doesn't happen if you don't communicate.
2. We recommend testing constructed on Cockatrice. Between bad decks, bad players, and random pairings, leagues feature a lot of wasted effort. Speaking as a Cockatrice doubter, the program is both faster and easier to learn than you think. We'll have Discord channels for scheduling sessions.
3. Re: Discord posts, even simple reports like "Played a league with X, went 3-2, didn't feel awful but going to look for something better." are super valuable for keeping everyone on the same page and preventing duplicate work. More detail is better, of course, like card that over- or underperformed for or against you, how specific matchups felt, etc.
4. You're welcome to communicate with people outside the group so long as you report your findings back. Still, be mindful of who you work with outside of the group and don't share brews or new technology without getting buy-in from the brewer or innovator. Don't share a brew with someone who you think might leak it, for example. Common sense should be fine here, but definitely ask if you're not sure.
5. Regarding communication, try to avoid the vagueness and hyperbole that dominate Magic discourse. Use numbers where you can. Rather than saying you think a matchup is good, say you think it's 55-45. Rather than saying you think a matchup singlehandedly turns on a particular card, say you think that card adds 20-30% when drawn in the matchup. Even if you make your numbers up, they're a better starting point than nothing.
6. If someone is being unclear or otherwise disruptive, please call them out on it. And conversely, if someone calls you out for being hyperbolic or derailing a conversation, don't feel attacked. We all have the same goal, to get to the ground truth of each format as efficiently as possible.
7. Similarly, don't stress too much about defending your thoughts or particularly about being right. It's better to say something, be wrong, and start a discussion than to not have that discussion. Again, our only goal is to get to the ground truth. No one's judging you.
8. There will be a spreadsheet for your draft results. Please fill it out. It doesn't matter whether you're drafting on Magic Online or IRL, which league you're playing, etc.
9. If you have any questions, please ask them. No stupid questions, etc.