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[MTG] Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it Magic.
Ugh. Super frustrated with a commander game and need to vent.
Guy plays his Shorikai deck multiple games in a row, which I'd be fine with generally - it's a new deck. But I'm pretty sure it was significantly more powerful than anything anyone else had (and this is partly because Shorikai is very strong, but it was also running a lot of the artifact deck staples - Unwinding Clock, Darksteel Forge, multiple cost reducers.).
The last game took fucking forever, because Unwinding Clock + 9 mana of rocks and Leyline to flash stuff in. Every end step we have to wait on him to use Shorikai multiple times (because of untappers), then play stuff out. And when I point out afterwards how unfun it is sitting through that he says it's not his fault the game took forever and wasn't fun, it's the mono-blue player for bouncing all his stuff a couple times (which, I should note, he just played all back out instantly because -2 cost on rocks, then 9 mana every turn and leyline kind of does that). He also just blamed us for not having more removal (and like, fucking seriously? You're drawing like 15 cards every time around the table, your artifacts are indestructible, and you can flash in a creature to animate and make all your artifacts fly, so it's basically impossible to attack you). Meanwhile he's just spending all his turns durdling and building up a bigger board and never attacks (he's got an indestructing fucking Parhelion II out and shit).
Half of my frustration is that the game wasn't fun (It was fun for a while - I got a good hand on Strefan... and then was stuck on three lands and sol ring for ages while everyone else built up. Once Strefan's trigger got countered a couple times... and then people got defenses up and with mana screw I couldn't play things normally really while holding up mana to deal with stuff. And then my board got picked apart and I flooded and ugh. Just bad draws...) meanwhile nothing is happening because one person is an invincible fortress and nobody else is attacking anyone because why make it easier for him? But once he got his artifacts board online it just stalled out - nobody could hit removal that did anything due to his card advantage and protection, but he wasn't trying to end the game.
The other half of my frustration is him saying it was all my fault it wasn't fun. (Can't use black removal on vehicle commander, not that it matters because he'll just flash it back in and laugh at the tax, can't kill the other vehicles, red can't break indestructible vehicles... and nobody had white for mass exile). If your deck is just going to lock up the board without winning, don't fucking play it.
Oh, he also lost the game - mono blue player eventually hit Omniscience > Enter the Infinite > Laboratory Maniac. The Shorikai player then insisted he play it out... and fucking what? It's a mono blue deck, if you don't have one of a small handful of cards you lose. And so we sit another five minutes because now the blue player has to find his combo, his protection for it, etc. and slowly go through it and respond to stuff. He insisted he was in the right doing that too - like, you damn well know you only win if he misplays, just pick up the cards and move on.
Short version: I hate "I get to take a turn on everyone else's turn too".
All the New Capenna crime families are more or less how I imagined they would be except for the Cabaretti. A can see the logic behind "nightclubs = jungle = green", though.
I guessed that the families would each be founded by an Elder Demon, and during the Q&A section, they revealed that they are each led by a Demon, and that those Demons have another creature type besides Demon, so I'm ready to prematurely declare victory on that one. Those must be their names on the triome cycle, right?
I'm guessing one of them is a Rakshasa, and maybe one is a demon dragon. The others might be much more boring and predictable, like Demon Warrior or Demon Wizard etc.
0
WearingGlassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
It is wild to me that the laywers group (Brokers) is Bant and not Esper. Not sure what green brings to the table there.
"Muscle" would be one suitably Green answer. Because the Brokers are the family who put the most effort into keeping their activities aboveboard, that makes it all the more important for them to have capable enforcers who can protect their interests. They need to make up for their lack of underhanded tactics with sheer overwhelming force.
One easy way to conceptualize arc-colored factions is to see the central color as the driving philosophy behind the faction while the two peripheral colors are more like tools that can be drawn as needed. If New Capenna's factions have that kind of organizational structure, they probably look something like this:
Obscura
White — Respectable public face of the family. Handles their public relations.
Blue — Leadership of the family. Keeps them focused on progress and longterm goals for the city.
Black — The ugly underbelly of the family who does the dirty work.
Maestros
Blue — Reliable agents who slowly but consistently increase the family's influence.
Black — Leadership of the family. Keeps them focused on utilitarian pragmatism.
Red — Decisive agents who take immediate measures in times of crisis.
Riveteers
Black — Ambitious punks with no respect for even the most sacred institutions of the city.
Red — Leadership of the family. Keeps them unfocused and encourages maximum individual expression.
Green — Humble laborers who keep the family grounded in working class values.
Cabaretti
Red — Entertainers who know how to get stiff guests to relax.
Green — Leadership of the family. Keeps them focused on isolationism and neutrality.
White — Dutiful servants who can act as wait staff, janitorial services, security, etc.
Brokers
Green — Formidable thugs who can ensure contractual obligations are met.
White — Leadership of the family. Keeps them focused on internal camaraderie and public responsibility.
Blue — Bureaucratic geniuses who wield cunning like a blade.
I skipped the Q&A segment last night because I was at board game night and questions from Twitch Chat are often pointless, but listening to it now Blake did mention that the Worldbuilding panel (on the 31st) will probably cover where green fits into that family.
Trying to modify a deck into pioneer and discovering that while the enemy pain lands (ex: Caves of Koilos) are legal, the allied pain lands (ex: Adarkar Wastes) are not is somewhat confusing.
(I understand it’s due to when they reprinted each cycle, just confused to how it ended up that way).
Trying to modify a deck into pioneer and discovering that while the enemy pain lands (ex: Caves of Koilos) are legal, the allied pain lands (ex: Adarkar Wastes) are not is somewhat confusing.
(I understand it’s due to when they reprinted each cycle, just confused to how it ended up that way).
Yeah it's one of many things they need to correct for Pioneer mana bases. However, because some* of the painlands are flavorfully tied to Dominaria there's a decent chance we see them later this year. My guess would be Brothers' War, since that might have an actual use for colorless mana (and the Caves of Koilos are where the brothers found powerstones IIRC).
*For the allied lands I think it's just Adarkar Wastes and Karplusan Forest, but all of the enemy ones are save Battlefield Forge.
Ugh. Super frustrated with a commander game and need to vent.
Guy plays his Shorikai deck multiple games in a row, which I'd be fine with generally - it's a new deck. But I'm pretty sure it was significantly more powerful than anything anyone else had (and this is partly because Shorikai is very strong, but it was also running a lot of the artifact deck staples - Unwinding Clock, Darksteel Forge, multiple cost reducers.).
The last game took fucking forever, because Unwinding Clock + 9 mana of rocks and Leyline to flash stuff in. Every end step we have to wait on him to use Shorikai multiple times (because of untappers), then play stuff out. And when I point out afterwards how unfun it is sitting through that he says it's not his fault the game took forever and wasn't fun, it's the mono-blue player for bouncing all his stuff a couple times (which, I should note, he just played all back out instantly because -2 cost on rocks, then 9 mana every turn and leyline kind of does that). He also just blamed us for not having more removal (and like, fucking seriously? You're drawing like 15 cards every time around the table, your artifacts are indestructible, and you can flash in a creature to animate and make all your artifacts fly, so it's basically impossible to attack you). Meanwhile he's just spending all his turns durdling and building up a bigger board and never attacks (he's got an indestructing fucking Parhelion II out and shit).
Half of my frustration is that the game wasn't fun (It was fun for a while - I got a good hand on Strefan... and then was stuck on three lands and sol ring for ages while everyone else built up. Once Strefan's trigger got countered a couple times... and then people got defenses up and with mana screw I couldn't play things normally really while holding up mana to deal with stuff. And then my board got picked apart and I flooded and ugh. Just bad draws...) meanwhile nothing is happening because one person is an invincible fortress and nobody else is attacking anyone because why make it easier for him? But once he got his artifacts board online it just stalled out - nobody could hit removal that did anything due to his card advantage and protection, but he wasn't trying to end the game.
The other half of my frustration is him saying it was all my fault it wasn't fun. (Can't use black removal on vehicle commander, not that it matters because he'll just flash it back in and laugh at the tax, can't kill the other vehicles, red can't break indestructible vehicles... and nobody had white for mass exile). If your deck is just going to lock up the board without winning, don't fucking play it.
Oh, he also lost the game - mono blue player eventually hit Omniscience > Enter the Infinite > Laboratory Maniac. The Shorikai player then insisted he play it out... and fucking what? It's a mono blue deck, if you don't have one of a small handful of cards you lose. And so we sit another five minutes because now the blue player has to find his combo, his protection for it, etc. and slowly go through it and respond to stuff. He insisted he was in the right doing that too - like, you damn well know you only win if he misplays, just pick up the cards and move on.
Short version: I hate "I get to take a turn on everyone else's turn too".
That person isn't even following the basic social conventions of board games, much less magic. They were a tool, that shit has no place outside of a money tournament, and even then you gotta close out games.
Ugh. Super frustrated with a commander game and need to vent.
Guy plays his Shorikai deck multiple games in a row, which I'd be fine with generally - it's a new deck. But I'm pretty sure it was significantly more powerful than anything anyone else had (and this is partly because Shorikai is very strong, but it was also running a lot of the artifact deck staples - Unwinding Clock, Darksteel Forge, multiple cost reducers.).
The last game took fucking forever, because Unwinding Clock + 9 mana of rocks and Leyline to flash stuff in. Every end step we have to wait on him to use Shorikai multiple times (because of untappers), then play stuff out. And when I point out afterwards how unfun it is sitting through that he says it's not his fault the game took forever and wasn't fun, it's the mono-blue player for bouncing all his stuff a couple times (which, I should note, he just played all back out instantly because -2 cost on rocks, then 9 mana every turn and leyline kind of does that). He also just blamed us for not having more removal (and like, fucking seriously? You're drawing like 15 cards every time around the table, your artifacts are indestructible, and you can flash in a creature to animate and make all your artifacts fly, so it's basically impossible to attack you). Meanwhile he's just spending all his turns durdling and building up a bigger board and never attacks (he's got an indestructing fucking Parhelion II out and shit).
Half of my frustration is that the game wasn't fun (It was fun for a while - I got a good hand on Strefan... and then was stuck on three lands and sol ring for ages while everyone else built up. Once Strefan's trigger got countered a couple times... and then people got defenses up and with mana screw I couldn't play things normally really while holding up mana to deal with stuff. And then my board got picked apart and I flooded and ugh. Just bad draws...) meanwhile nothing is happening because one person is an invincible fortress and nobody else is attacking anyone because why make it easier for him? But once he got his artifacts board online it just stalled out - nobody could hit removal that did anything due to his card advantage and protection, but he wasn't trying to end the game.
The other half of my frustration is him saying it was all my fault it wasn't fun. (Can't use black removal on vehicle commander, not that it matters because he'll just flash it back in and laugh at the tax, can't kill the other vehicles, red can't break indestructible vehicles... and nobody had white for mass exile). If your deck is just going to lock up the board without winning, don't fucking play it.
Oh, he also lost the game - mono blue player eventually hit Omniscience > Enter the Infinite > Laboratory Maniac. The Shorikai player then insisted he play it out... and fucking what? It's a mono blue deck, if you don't have one of a small handful of cards you lose. And so we sit another five minutes because now the blue player has to find his combo, his protection for it, etc. and slowly go through it and respond to stuff. He insisted he was in the right doing that too - like, you damn well know you only win if he misplays, just pick up the cards and move on.
Short version: I hate "I get to take a turn on everyone else's turn too".
That person isn't even following the basic social conventions of board games, much less magic. They were a tool, that shit has no place outside of a money tournament, and even then you gotta close out games.
Yeah that guy took a look at rule zero, said it doesn't apply to him, and decided to force a friendly table to help him test his obnoxious bullshit. Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy saw Llawan and thought playing it with Painter's Servant sounded like a good, fun time.
Ugh. Super frustrated with a commander game and need to vent.
Guy plays his Shorikai deck multiple games in a row, which I'd be fine with generally - it's a new deck. But I'm pretty sure it was significantly more powerful than anything anyone else had (and this is partly because Shorikai is very strong, but it was also running a lot of the artifact deck staples - Unwinding Clock, Darksteel Forge, multiple cost reducers.).
The last game took fucking forever, because Unwinding Clock + 9 mana of rocks and Leyline to flash stuff in. Every end step we have to wait on him to use Shorikai multiple times (because of untappers), then play stuff out. And when I point out afterwards how unfun it is sitting through that he says it's not his fault the game took forever and wasn't fun, it's the mono-blue player for bouncing all his stuff a couple times (which, I should note, he just played all back out instantly because -2 cost on rocks, then 9 mana every turn and leyline kind of does that). He also just blamed us for not having more removal (and like, fucking seriously? You're drawing like 15 cards every time around the table, your artifacts are indestructible, and you can flash in a creature to animate and make all your artifacts fly, so it's basically impossible to attack you). Meanwhile he's just spending all his turns durdling and building up a bigger board and never attacks (he's got an indestructing fucking Parhelion II out and shit).
Half of my frustration is that the game wasn't fun (It was fun for a while - I got a good hand on Strefan... and then was stuck on three lands and sol ring for ages while everyone else built up. Once Strefan's trigger got countered a couple times... and then people got defenses up and with mana screw I couldn't play things normally really while holding up mana to deal with stuff. And then my board got picked apart and I flooded and ugh. Just bad draws...) meanwhile nothing is happening because one person is an invincible fortress and nobody else is attacking anyone because why make it easier for him? But once he got his artifacts board online it just stalled out - nobody could hit removal that did anything due to his card advantage and protection, but he wasn't trying to end the game.
The other half of my frustration is him saying it was all my fault it wasn't fun. (Can't use black removal on vehicle commander, not that it matters because he'll just flash it back in and laugh at the tax, can't kill the other vehicles, red can't break indestructible vehicles... and nobody had white for mass exile). If your deck is just going to lock up the board without winning, don't fucking play it.
Oh, he also lost the game - mono blue player eventually hit Omniscience > Enter the Infinite > Laboratory Maniac. The Shorikai player then insisted he play it out... and fucking what? It's a mono blue deck, if you don't have one of a small handful of cards you lose. And so we sit another five minutes because now the blue player has to find his combo, his protection for it, etc. and slowly go through it and respond to stuff. He insisted he was in the right doing that too - like, you damn well know you only win if he misplays, just pick up the cards and move on.
Short version: I hate "I get to take a turn on everyone else's turn too".
That person isn't even following the basic social conventions of board games, much less magic. They were a tool, that shit has no place outside of a money tournament, and even then you gotta close out games.
Yeah that guy took a look at rule zero, said it doesn't apply to him, and decided to force a friendly table to help him test his obnoxious bullshit. Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy saw Llawan and thought playing it with Painter's Servant sounded like a good, fun time.
To be fair, the first game with the deck I'd allow - it's entirely possible he considered it just a modified precon without really thinking through how much stronger the stuff he added made it. But after the first game he should have realized it wasn't in the same ballpark (and a big part of that is just that Shorikai is kind of ridiculous)
The best way to make a powerful deck is to make it redundant (or consistent I guess might be a better term) or synergistic, or both. Decks that are both in Commander are way, way better than precons. It's why I've generally tried to lower the power level of my decks by making them extremely unfocused. It makes for more varied games, which are, in general, more fun.
The best way to make a powerful deck is to make it redundant (or consistent I guess might be a better term) or synergistic, or both. Decks that are both in Commander are way, way better than precons. It's why I've generally tried to lower the power level of my decks by making them extremely unfocused. It makes for more varied games, which are, in general, more fun.
Which is why Shorikai is a big part of the issue - it provides a lot of card advantage plus defense in the command zone, to where it's probably just "top three Azorius commanders" regardless of strategy. Throwing in the staple artifact synergy cards, well... unfortunately there's no such thing as a fair artifact deck. The scary thing is I don't think he was actually trying to go nuts (hi, have you met my friends Master Transmuter and Kuldotha Forgemaster, etc?), I just don't think he properly evaluated the deck's strength and had a poor attitude about it. (Also, the trap of becoming archenemy while not being able to close out a game... I've been there before with stuff like a Martyr's Bond in Liesa making it impossible for anyone to have creatures but I can't draw into any threats beyond my commander, but... he definitely could have been beating everyone down easily).
There were a few off-hand mentions to "the halo" when describing the guilds in the preview and as far as i can tell they didn't explicitly say what it was, whether a drug, a currency, etc
They revealed all the commands for Strixhaven so I was hoping to get a bit more. Ah well.
We got the Triomes and a tacit reveal of cycling in the set.
in a huge swerve, maro has revealed on his tumblr that the triomes are the only cards with cycling in the set
they valued completing the land cycle over having to wait for when they designed a shard set with cycling
That makes sense. There's a lot of demand for the shard triomes since they're so fetchable.
Although now I'm curious what the smoothing ability in this set will be. Previous sets with a 3-color focus (Shards block, Khans, and tobacco lesser extent Ikoria) used cycling or morph. Cycling being in the set made sense but we'll have to see.
Maybe they'll make my cube really happy and go with a hunch of off-color activations.
The best way to make a powerful deck is to make it redundant (or consistent I guess might be a better term) or synergistic, or both. Decks that are both in Commander are way, way better than precons. It's why I've generally tried to lower the power level of my decks by making them extremely unfocused. It makes for more varied games, which are, in general, more fun.
Which is why Shorikai is a big part of the issue - it provides a lot of card advantage plus defense in the command zone, to where it's probably just "top three Azorius commanders" regardless of strategy. Throwing in the staple artifact synergy cards, well... unfortunately there's no such thing as a fair artifact deck. The scary thing is I don't think he was actually trying to go nuts (hi, have you met my friends Master Transmuter and Kuldotha Forgemaster, etc?), I just don't think he properly evaluated the deck's strength and had a poor attitude about it. (Also, the trap of becoming archenemy while not being able to close out a game... I've been there before with stuff like a Martyr's Bond in Liesa making it impossible for anyone to have creatures but I can't draw into any threats beyond my commander, but... he definitely could have been beating everyone down easily).
This is why I'm a big fan of 1-2 card wincons in commander; just dragging the game out while jerking off to your awesome boardstate is way more annoying. Plus I generally appreciate faster games, means you get to play more games instead of getting trapped in some hellish standoff.
Just did my first real full magic weekend coming out of no paper events for 2 years. Some ok tournament play, some great dinners with friends, and just oh deer lorde the long day is so exhausting. I can’t believe just two years ago traveling to things like this was fairly common, and now it’s like “you mean I have to wake up to drive to the suburbs twice? This is an outrage!”
Even in limited I think it's a lot more underwhelming than people anticipated (myself included).
You need to be capable of swinging in with two things at once, and one of those things has to get through unblocked. Then you've got to bounce that unblocked thing to clone the other, and in all likelihood this means bouncing your big thing that's hard to trade with in combat to clone an incidental value card. That's not particularly amazing.
Sure, sometimes you play Thousand Faced Shadow T1 and get 2-3 damage in before you bounce it for another ninja, but a lot of times it's only good if you're already winning.
Even in limited I think it's a lot more underwhelming than people anticipated (myself included).
You need to be capable of swinging in with two things at once, and one of those things has to get through unblocked. Then you've got to bounce that unblocked thing to clone the other, and in all likelihood this means bouncing your big thing that's hard to trade with in combat to clone an incidental value card. That's not particularly amazing.
Sure, sometimes you play Thousand Faced Shadow T1 and get 2-3 damage in before you bounce it for another ninja, but a lot of times it's only good if you're already winning.
During a prerelease my wife managed to use it to clone her Replication Specialist. Her board got kinda dumb after that. Let's hear it for Infinitokens, though!
This is me, extremely shocked Disciple of the Vault was actually legal in pauper.
0
Kevin CristI make the devil hit his kneesand say the 'our father'Registered Userregular
Interesting to see if they'll do anything in with Lurrus in historic. One suggestion I saw was to remove the companion stuff, while keeping the "can only bring back 2CMC or less."
Heiko was definitely the non-Hot Springs MVP here. Besides the Skyscraper nonsense, her primary function was endless Kunai. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker also obviously excellent. I'm sure one opponent was very confused when I used Network Terminal to loot and actually discarded Fable; turns out the Master's Rebuke I was already holding was more important.
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
my last successful draft deck was very thrown together good-stuff with no real theme (BW), and by the 3rd pack I was just desperate for some kind of win condition. I picked up a Walking Skyscraper with very few ways to modify creatures, figured I could just hardcast it. I did hardcast it a few times and it worked out well, and once even got to pull off the obnoxious combo, Walking Skyscraper wearing Cloudsteel Kirin. Obviously it's not impenetrable, but it is only vulnerable to a few narrow answers. The one time I pulled it off, my opponent was already down on cards and desperately drew themselves to death looking for an answer, while their creatures repeatedly charged past my idle Skyscraper and put me to like -30.
Posts
The last game took fucking forever, because Unwinding Clock + 9 mana of rocks and Leyline to flash stuff in. Every end step we have to wait on him to use Shorikai multiple times (because of untappers), then play stuff out. And when I point out afterwards how unfun it is sitting through that he says it's not his fault the game took forever and wasn't fun, it's the mono-blue player for bouncing all his stuff a couple times (which, I should note, he just played all back out instantly because -2 cost on rocks, then 9 mana every turn and leyline kind of does that). He also just blamed us for not having more removal (and like, fucking seriously? You're drawing like 15 cards every time around the table, your artifacts are indestructible, and you can flash in a creature to animate and make all your artifacts fly, so it's basically impossible to attack you). Meanwhile he's just spending all his turns durdling and building up a bigger board and never attacks (he's got an indestructing fucking Parhelion II out and shit).
Half of my frustration is that the game wasn't fun (It was fun for a while - I got a good hand on Strefan... and then was stuck on three lands and sol ring for ages while everyone else built up. Once Strefan's trigger got countered a couple times... and then people got defenses up and with mana screw I couldn't play things normally really while holding up mana to deal with stuff. And then my board got picked apart and I flooded and ugh. Just bad draws...) meanwhile nothing is happening because one person is an invincible fortress and nobody else is attacking anyone because why make it easier for him? But once he got his artifacts board online it just stalled out - nobody could hit removal that did anything due to his card advantage and protection, but he wasn't trying to end the game.
The other half of my frustration is him saying it was all my fault it wasn't fun. (Can't use black removal on vehicle commander, not that it matters because he'll just flash it back in and laugh at the tax, can't kill the other vehicles, red can't break indestructible vehicles... and nobody had white for mass exile). If your deck is just going to lock up the board without winning, don't fucking play it.
Oh, he also lost the game - mono blue player eventually hit Omniscience > Enter the Infinite > Laboratory Maniac. The Shorikai player then insisted he play it out... and fucking what? It's a mono blue deck, if you don't have one of a small handful of cards you lose. And so we sit another five minutes because now the blue player has to find his combo, his protection for it, etc. and slowly go through it and respond to stuff. He insisted he was in the right doing that too - like, you damn well know you only win if he misplays, just pick up the cards and move on.
Short version: I hate "I get to take a turn on everyone else's turn too".
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I guessed that the families would each be founded by an Elder Demon, and during the Q&A section, they revealed that they are each led by a Demon, and that those Demons have another creature type besides Demon, so I'm ready to prematurely declare victory on that one. Those must be their names on the triome cycle, right?
It is wild to me that the laywers group (Brokers) is Bant and not Esper. Not sure what green brings to the table there.
"Muscle" would be one suitably Green answer. Because the Brokers are the family who put the most effort into keeping their activities aboveboard, that makes it all the more important for them to have capable enforcers who can protect their interests. They need to make up for their lack of underhanded tactics with sheer overwhelming force.
One easy way to conceptualize arc-colored factions is to see the central color as the driving philosophy behind the faction while the two peripheral colors are more like tools that can be drawn as needed. If New Capenna's factions have that kind of organizational structure, they probably look something like this:
Obscura
Maestros
Riveteers
Cabaretti
Brokers
(I understand it’s due to when they reprinted each cycle, just confused to how it ended up that way).
Yeah it's one of many things they need to correct for Pioneer mana bases. However, because some* of the painlands are flavorfully tied to Dominaria there's a decent chance we see them later this year. My guess would be Brothers' War, since that might have an actual use for colorless mana (and the Caves of Koilos are where the brothers found powerstones IIRC).
*For the allied lands I think it's just Adarkar Wastes and Karplusan Forest, but all of the enemy ones are save Battlefield Forge.
in a huge swerve, maro has revealed on his tumblr that the triomes are the only cards with cycling in the set
they valued completing the land cycle over having to wait for when they designed a shard set with cycling
That person isn't even following the basic social conventions of board games, much less magic. They were a tool, that shit has no place outside of a money tournament, and even then you gotta close out games.
That makes sense. There's a lot of demand for the shard triomes since they're so fetchable.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Yeah that guy took a look at rule zero, said it doesn't apply to him, and decided to force a friendly table to help him test his obnoxious bullshit. Like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this guy saw Llawan and thought playing it with Painter's Servant sounded like a good, fun time.
To be fair, the first game with the deck I'd allow - it's entirely possible he considered it just a modified precon without really thinking through how much stronger the stuff he added made it. But after the first game he should have realized it wasn't in the same ballpark (and a big part of that is just that Shorikai is kind of ridiculous)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Which is why Shorikai is a big part of the issue - it provides a lot of card advantage plus defense in the command zone, to where it's probably just "top three Azorius commanders" regardless of strategy. Throwing in the staple artifact synergy cards, well... unfortunately there's no such thing as a fair artifact deck. The scary thing is I don't think he was actually trying to go nuts (hi, have you met my friends Master Transmuter and Kuldotha Forgemaster, etc?), I just don't think he properly evaluated the deck's strength and had a poor attitude about it. (Also, the trap of becoming archenemy while not being able to close out a game... I've been there before with stuff like a Martyr's Bond in Liesa making it impossible for anyone to have creatures but I can't draw into any threats beyond my commander, but... he definitely could have been beating everyone down easily).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Ooh, if that's the case, do you think we'll get a "Form of the Demon" card?
Although now I'm curious what the smoothing ability in this set will be. Previous sets with a 3-color focus (Shards block, Khans, and tobacco lesser extent Ikoria) used cycling or morph. Cycling being in the set made sense but we'll have to see.
Maybe they'll make my cube really happy and go with a hunch of off-color activations.
This is why I'm a big fan of 1-2 card wincons in commander; just dragging the game out while jerking off to your awesome boardstate is way more annoying. Plus I generally appreciate faster games, means you get to play more games instead of getting trapped in some hellish standoff.
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
You need to be capable of swinging in with two things at once, and one of those things has to get through unblocked. Then you've got to bounce that unblocked thing to clone the other, and in all likelihood this means bouncing your big thing that's hard to trade with in combat to clone an incidental value card. That's not particularly amazing.
Sure, sometimes you play Thousand Faced Shadow T1 and get 2-3 damage in before you bounce it for another ninja, but a lot of times it's only good if you're already winning.
During a prerelease my wife managed to use it to clone her Replication Specialist. Her board got kinda dumb after that. Let's hear it for Infinitokens, though!
* more like Gavinic Verhey imo**
** I am very sorry for that joke***
*** No I'm not
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
do with that as you will.
I've never been happier that I bought cards for a deck the day before it hit a ban. Lurus should have been gone a year ago
I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to facing endless control / yorion piles.
Heiko was definitely the non-Hot Springs MVP here. Besides the Skyscraper nonsense, her primary function was endless Kunai. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker also obviously excellent. I'm sure one opponent was very confused when I used Network Terminal to loot and actually discarded Fable; turns out the Master's Rebuke I was already holding was more important.
This week I only went 2-1. But I cracked a regular Boseiju in the third pack. And another in prizes. (Plus a Kaito, so...)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Jump In!: modified sealed decks (pick two themed half-decks and shuffle)