Darn, the Engine I bought for $9 at release and turned into $50 some time ago is now $10. Curse it all, I made $1!
Well, it was fun and I got two years of solid pubstomping with my good ol' engine. Definitely one of my favorite powerful cards of all time, right up there with necropotence and grim monolith. Sad to see it go, but it was all so worth it.
The legends generals only top this list in english printings. Legends was famously reprinted with much more quantity in Europe a year later in 1995, just like p3k saw a longer print run in Asia.
So if you want cheaper legends or p3k, consider Italian or chinese simplified printings, respectively.
No. I trust them to listen when they need to listen and follow their own north star the rest of the time. I don't have the requisite hubris to try to dictate a creative process that's way over my head.
Never knew it was series! I do love me some reading material, and my to-read pillar is getting rather short. I'll have to see if I can track them down.
Also, you guys remember the scene from Howl's Moving Castle where they use the magic to "move" (i.e. change the exit locations for the magical portal door)? The more I consider our incoming move to the new site, the more it feels like some kind magical event during which radical transformation occurs resulting in about the same thing, but new and better.
I can respect that. I think maybe instead of remaining mired in anecdotes, rhetoric, and speculation, we as a community should devise some means to acquire the needed stats to prove stuff, with p values, standard deviations and everything. The edhrec salt score is a good start, albeit limited. I personally have limited knowledge of computers and databases, but with tech whizzes like scoeri floating around, someone could come up with something. What do you think?
I like the idea of trying to approach the problem subjectively, but I think there's a lot of problems with this approach.
For a start, commander doesn't have a pro-tour scene to use as a barometer for what's good in the format. There are no major tournaments and no pro players, which means there isn't really a good, objective place to look for data. The foibles of kitchen table players is, at best, loosely based on the actual strengths of the cards, whereas pros can be counted upon to do whatever is the most powerful thing available to them. The pro scene makes it possible to determine what's actually problematic based on its ubiquity at high-level competition.
But that's the second problem, which is that the goal of EDH isn't actually clear. Everyone knows (or should know) that sol ring, from a strict power level standpoint, is absurdly strong. But that isn't necessarily a problem, exactly, because it's true that multiplayer can be self-regulating and the goal isn't a perfectly balanced format. Sol ring creates powerful starts - sure, everyone knows that. Is that bad? Well, it depends what you want out of the format, and there's not an objective answer to that.
And of course a third problem is that people aren't necessarily good arbiters of what would actually make the format more enjoyable. Myself included. It's hard to see past your own personal bubble - I'll admit the loss of fast mana would be a major blow to my Kaervek deck, for example. When the mulligan rule changed away from partial paris, my zirilan deck was mighty disappointed. I think I have a relatively objective view since I don't have much attachment to any particular deck, but I definitely have an attachment to the sorts of strategies I tend to like, and the suggestion of rules changes that make those strategies less viable generally make me unhappy. But that's a fairly short-sighted view - those rules might actually make the game more fun, or maybe less fun for me but more fun for a lot of other people. It's really hard to say.
But certainly many people hate it, short-term, when their favorite cards get banned, even if they were seriously harming the format. There were plenty of people upset when ravager got banned, when jace got banned, when ancestral recall got restricted, and some of those people probably quit playing magic forever. But the formats were better for those bans. As players we don't have a great viewpoint for how to run an actual format, and even taking a poll of many players isn't necessarily going to fix that problem. I think really the only solution would be to test run the format - which is a great idea for someone in charge of the rules and banlist, but not something many people are going to be willing to do just for S&Gs. And if they are, good chance it's in the hopes of proving their own point, anyway. Which is probably what I'd be doing, intentionally or not.
God damn it, Dirk. You may be the hardest person on this whole site to debate against because you're always so $#@^€& thoughtful and reasonable. Maybe they can promote you to moderater or something after the move. I mean, if jivan can do it after his early years of constant infractions, anyone can. And you're such a calming presence.
Edit: now that I think about it, it's just like the mighty pheldagriff, impossible to demonize yet constantly winning.
I can respect that. I think maybe instead of remaining mired in anecdotes, rhetoric, and speculation, we as a community should devise some means to acquire the needed stats to prove stuff, with p values, standard deviations and everything. The edhrec salt score is a good start, albeit limited. I personally have limited knowledge of computers and databases, but with tech whizzes like scoeri floating around, someone could come up with something. What do you think?
We can't try to identify trends that might lead to larger future problems, and head them off at the pass? [...] Of course it's impossible to prove a general trend from such few data points[...]
But this is exactly my point! We do not have the data, so we shouldn't be trying to preempt things we cannot possibly predict. Crafting format-spanning changes by extrapolating the rhetoric of an angry and extremely vocal minority (which we of mtgs definitely are) is not a recipe for long-term success either. The RC, for all intents and purposes, has done a good job, as reflected in the success and expansion of EDH. Perfect? No, because that's subjective. Unlivably bad or broken? Certainly not.
For things like climate change and car maintenance, I agree we should be ahead of the curve. For EDH, with admittedly no good data, I think we should cross bridges when and if (and certainly not before) we get there.
Edit:grammar
2nd edit: I promise to eat my mtgs account if I'm totally off-base here and sweeping changes are around the corner. But I seriously just don't see where all this discontent came from.
The tent is huge enough right now, I'm the only one (it seems) who doesn't want it any smaller because I don't want anything new banned nor any sweeping, dramatic changes to micromanage or standardize the experience.
Good bans shouldn't shrink the number of players, at least not long-term. It ought to expand it. Having a more robust, strategically-deep format by having a well-designed rules and banlist can help draw more people in.
I won't pretend that I know what the impact of banning sol ring specifically would be, of course.
But the format is already hugely popular and hence my point: we have NONE of the tell-tale signs of format failure or deterioration. No mass deck homogeneity (edhrec aside), no wilting attendance, no truly ubiquitous must-have threats.
So by what metric exactly are we folks making determinations for these proposed bans/changes? I see a lot of disparate anecdotes but not much hard evidence. And doing away with even just fast mana would be a BIG change with considerable consequence. I understand we're all just negligible, unknowing blips floating in the soup of the universe, but I just honestly don't think balanced forethought is present in equal quantity to wishful thinking in this particular thread.
Would the format be more enjoyable without fast mana? Maybe. The fact is, we don't know. The better question then remains, is it worth the risk to change something that isn't currently broken? I'd say no. We're welcome to disagree. But if we continue to do so, I really want to see where exactly the world's burning down because of sol ring.
I ask without sarcasm, implicit or otherwise, by any and all means, please show me.
Well, it was fun and I got two years of solid pubstomping with my good ol' engine. Definitely one of my favorite powerful cards of all time, right up there with necropotence and grim monolith. Sad to see it go, but it was all so worth it.
So if you want cheaper legends or p3k, consider Italian or chinese simplified printings, respectively.
You'll need a lot more infractions and [edit] a fanatical devotion to dimir, but I can see it.
Edited because I'm actively not trying to flame people, and my original post was kinda tasteless. Sorry.
I want this quote printed on sleeves for a vintage deck.
Also, you guys remember the scene from Howl's Moving Castle where they use the magic to "move" (i.e. change the exit locations for the magical portal door)? The more I consider our incoming move to the new site, the more it feels like some kind magical event during which radical transformation occurs resulting in about the same thing, but new and better.
Needless to say, someone's excited.
God damn it, Dirk. You may be the hardest person on this whole site to debate against because you're always so $#@^€& thoughtful and reasonable. Maybe they can promote you to moderater or something after the move. I mean, if jivan can do it after his early years of constant infractions, anyone can. And you're such a calming presence.
Edit: now that I think about it, it's just like the mighty pheldagriff, impossible to demonize yet constantly winning.
But this is exactly my point! We do not have the data, so we shouldn't be trying to preempt things we cannot possibly predict. Crafting format-spanning changes by extrapolating the rhetoric of an angry and extremely vocal minority (which we of mtgs definitely are) is not a recipe for long-term success either. The RC, for all intents and purposes, has done a good job, as reflected in the success and expansion of EDH. Perfect? No, because that's subjective. Unlivably bad or broken? Certainly not.
For things like climate change and car maintenance, I agree we should be ahead of the curve. For EDH, with admittedly no good data, I think we should cross bridges when and if (and certainly not before) we get there.
Edit:grammar
2nd edit: I promise to eat my mtgs account if I'm totally off-base here and sweeping changes are around the corner. But I seriously just don't see where all this discontent came from.
But the format is already hugely popular and hence my point: we have NONE of the tell-tale signs of format failure or deterioration. No mass deck homogeneity (edhrec aside), no wilting attendance, no truly ubiquitous must-have threats.
So by what metric exactly are we folks making determinations for these proposed bans/changes? I see a lot of disparate anecdotes but not much hard evidence. And doing away with even just fast mana would be a BIG change with considerable consequence. I understand we're all just negligible, unknowing blips floating in the soup of the universe, but I just honestly don't think balanced forethought is present in equal quantity to wishful thinking in this particular thread.
Would the format be more enjoyable without fast mana? Maybe. The fact is, we don't know. The better question then remains, is it worth the risk to change something that isn't currently broken? I'd say no. We're welcome to disagree. But if we continue to do so, I really want to see where exactly the world's burning down because of sol ring.
I ask without sarcasm, implicit or otherwise, by any and all means, please show me.
If not, here you go:
https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings
Go ask them, I assure you they'll know.