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  • posted a message on Wizards cuts ties with artist Noah Bradley
    Quote from Onering »
    From his picture in the first article, he certainly looks like a stereotype of a sexual predator.
    He’s pretty hot actually. That’s just a bad picture.

    I really do love his art Frown


    I'm more talking about that shirt plus that necklace/pendant. It makes him look like a magician that makes things disappear in your drink. It's entirely based on how he's dressed, it's pickup artist style.
    Posted in: Magic General
  • posted a message on Wizards cuts ties with artist Terese Nielsen
    Quote from Kryptnyt »
    It is not the fault of Terese Nielsen or of WotC that we won't get further artwork from her on our cards. It's the fault of Outrage Culture. Everyone has to be outraged about something or another, especially on Twitter. Nielsen is entitled to her beliefs and WotC is entitled to make good money decisions. Maybe a bunch of dumb people screaming about things on Twitter has a lot of weight now. I wonder if the world will grow up and grow toughskinned to this sort of thing? Or if the real trials are yet to come.

    In other news, Noah Bradley is a total creepy scumbag who apparently goes around giving out sex invitation cards, and his wife is a cuck who supports him, and that's much more upsetting to me than Terese Nielsen liking goofy politics. By all accounts she's a very sweet and kind woman, how many of you have moms or aunts who have weird political or religious beliefs?


    1. Noah Bradley has also been let go, so that portion of your argument has sunk

    2. The proper term is "cuckquean" (sic). This has been a public service announcement, use this knowledge responsibly (incognito mode)

    3. I have relatives with similar views to Nielson. If I had a business, I wouldn't want them representing it. And antisemitism is *****ty, and makes you *****ty if you buy into it. It's a dangerous belief system that has repeatedly led to real world atrocities, but the atrocities come only after antisemitism has taken root in a society and has become tolerated. It always starts off as fringe, and if is dismissed as harmless it eventually becomes tolerated, and once it's tolerated it begins to enter into serious conversation and worms it's way into public life, and by that point the stage is set for atrocities and it is too ingrained in society to fix without great effort (or a an atrocity that shocks observers into intolerance of anti semitism). Personally, I prefer that society stamps it out while it's fringe, that the proper reaction to genuine anti semitism (as opposed to good faith criticism of Israel for it's actions), is for society to hold it in contempt, and that being anti semitic should carry social consequences to put a cost on such views. The government should not ban such speech or beliefs, but people who espouse them should be corrected, and if they persist they should be shunned, and they should expect that companies do not want to associate with anti semites and people do not want to spend time with anti semites and society does not want to hear from antisemites. And I'd argue that goes for any similar ideology, be it white supremacy, Islamic extremism, homophobia, etc.
    Posted in: Magic General
  • posted a message on Wizards cuts ties with artist Noah Bradley
    From his picture in the first article, he certainly looks like a stereotype of a sexual predator.
    Posted in: Magic General
  • posted a message on Wizards cuts ties with artist Terese Nielsen
    It's not like WotC didn't try to give her a chance to at least publicly clean up her nonsense. A lesser artist would have been cut immediately for liking some of the ***** she liked on Twitter. Wizards gave her the chance to not **** up on social media for a year or so and apologize, but she gave a kind of crappy apology and continued to associate with the far right and conspiracy theorists who peddle in racist bull*****. Had she just not done that, she'd be back. Hell, had WotC not become embroiled in its own controversies surrounding it's corporate culture,they would have probably still found a way to work her back in.

    But, unlucky for her, people want WotC to be less *****ty, and her continued palling around with *****ty people went against that. Too bad,so sad. I'll miss her incredible artwork, but it's her own fault.
    Posted in: Magic General
  • posted a message on The Command Zone #335 'Mythbusters'
    One important point on how often commanders are cast is hot often they stick. I've found that commanders that are central to the gameplan tend to get cast when they are prepping to win, or can be protected. You don't need to cast a commander more than once if the game ends before it dies. So this is an interesting data point but not necessarily a reflection on the importance of commanders to the format, as actually being really important to the deck can lead to the commander being cast fewer times do to it winning the game or the pilot protecting it, or recurring it.

    An interesting stat would be how often is a commander removed each game.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • posted a message on [IKO] Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths- Ebook and Story
    Quote from Xeruh »
    Quote from OathboundOne »
    Quote from Xeruh »
    I mean, honestly she feels like Sarkhan to me, just Green not Red. Not a great PoV and goals that are maybe on some level understandable but also very much works as a villain.


    Though other than killing hunters I’m not sure how Vivien would be a villain. She doesn’t hate humans. She hates poachers/people killing for purposes other than survival.


    "Hate" maybe not, but she makes her absolute *disdain* for humanity very clear.


    Sure, but disdain for humanity doesn’t make someone a villain. It could help them become one but there is plenty to be disdainful of.



    This isn't a hypothetical, we have her last actions to go on. And her past actions include destroying a city and murdering thousands of innocents to save a few dinosaurs. She may not be actively trying to wipe out humanity, but she smiles when thousands of people die because of her actions. That's completely fine by her. She had a reason to get back out the vampire nobles that tortured her, but she went there looking for trouble in the first place and started the fight. But whatever, they tortured her so **** them. But to destroy the whole city, and be cool with people who were completely uninvolved with her treatment getting eaten by dinosaurs and killed in the flood and city's collapse? That's just insanely evil.
    Posted in: Magic Storyline
  • posted a message on [IKO] Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths- Ebook and Story
    Viv is an absolute piece of trash. Throughout the guide she looks down on people trying to defend themselves. This is a plane where monsters constantly kill people, and she's upset that humans kill monsters, mostly in self defense. Basically what I expected from the lady who destroyed an entire city just to free a dinosaur. She's a monster.
    Posted in: Magic Storyline
  • posted a message on Run more interaction! Run more fast mana! Or: The death of interesting edh deckbuilding
    Quote from Carthage »

    I run between 6 and 12 decks at any given time, but overall I've probably made more than 30 commander decks.

    Not really, I've had a store group that is not fixed, and groups of friends that eventually stop meeting up over the years. Right now I have a sort of stable group but they have one deck each and the power level is very out of balance.

    For the first few years of edh, pretty substantial. Lately? Almost no variance. Broken cards are stronger than general synergy, so the list rarely changes.

    It sounds like we have a similar enough experience to compare notes.
    ~14-15 decks currently, Built/co-built a ton more for friends and ended up retiring ~10 of my own decks along the way to get where I am.

    As others have mentioned, unfortunately, the nature of the game is such that stronger cards or functional reprints of worthwhile ones (ex. Cultivate and Kodama's Reach) need to occur to incentivize people purchasing the new products. Sometimes people chase new arts, foils, promos, alt. languages, etc. But the act itself of "Upgrading" one's deck, whether it's strictly on a power level basis or for the sake of a theme, it's a completely natural part of the game and the deckbuilding process.

    Some people happen to have more disposable income than others and it allows them to circumnavigate the trials of saving up, trading, cracking, etc. It's unfortunate when it allows for a larger power jump than a playgroup is ready for, because the arms race often follows.

    I won't claim to know what the financial circumstances are like for you or those around in your current group, but I'd like to try to recommend a few things.
    1. Try to get the group to be on board with a different deck idea with a budget of $30-50 ($100 if everyone's down) and see what they say. Obviously exclude foil costs if people have them and cut the cost for basic lands out entirely.
    2. Try to get your LGS to run a Commander League with points. They often have merits/demerits for playing fast mana early, knocking people out before a certain turn, looping a combo more than a few times in a turn, etc.
    3. Maybe offer up one of your other decks for them to run instead of the one they have. They might be curious about running a different archetype (ex. Voltron, tribal, lifegain, etc.), but lack the funds or card collection to make one they think would have a shot in the current meta there. This goes back to the TL;DR I mentioned - Budget, CMC average, No cards over a certain CMC in deck, Color restrictions, Less popular theme, Play bigger games with more people and opportunity for interaction, etc. Get them to give something like that a shot?
    4. Try a game type variant. Planechase, Star Magic, Cowboy/Bang, King (whatever you want to call it), something.


    Rules
    The game needs 5-7 people total.
    Cards to denote the given roles are sleeved and shuffled face down and picked at random.
    Plains = Sheriff/King (There's only ever 1)
    Island = Deputy (starts at quantity 1 and then gets another at odd player intervals - 5, 7, 9, etc.)
    Swamp = Outlaw/Assassin
    Mountain = Renegade/Usurper (There's only ever 1)

    The Sheriff is the only role to be revealed at the start of the game.
    Sheriff starts with 20 life + 10 for each other player. Everyone else is at 40.
    Sheriff goes first (and draws)
    If anyone kills an outlaw, they get to draw 3 cards as a bounty.
    If the Sheriff kills their Deputy, they discard their hand.
    The Renegade often plays the fence.
    Everyone is trying to convince the Sheriff that they are the Deputy, until they aren't.

    Win conditions:
    Sheriff and Deputy(s) win when the Outlaws and the Renegade are dead.
    Outlaws win when the Sheriff dies.
    Renegade wins when they and the Sheriff are the last 2 standing and the Sheriff dies.
    **Alternate win conditions don't function at all**

    It adds a very political element to the game, and it helps muddy the waters for power levels.
    The King variant just has the Usurper take the King's place as King if they manage to kill them.

    We play the Bang variant probably 75% of the time with the other 25% being a mix of free-for-all and 2-headed giant.

    I suggest these things because I have had to do the same at the request of my play group. I have some 8-9's in my collection that positively go nuts, but I only break them out every once in a while, because of how degenerate they can get. Maybe get a couple lower power games in before breaking out the haymakers for a quick game at the end of the night?


    I really, really like option 3 and have used it to great effect. I've actually taken it a step further in the past, where each member of the playgroup builds enough decks for each other member to use, and builds them the way they like. Then each night the group uses a different members decks. The member that built them explains the concept of each deck and everyone gets a chance to look through the deck they get to familiarize themselves with it before playing. The only rule is that each deck built by the same member should be around the same power level as the others, so they are evenly matched. Once you don't have to worry about the arms race, you feel comfortable building wonkier decks with sub optimal choices, because you can ensure its going up against decks built the same way. Some players will build a set of 75% decks of different archetypes, some will build upgraded precons, some will build theme decks, some tribal, some a mix, some will build niche archetypes, some will build a battlecruiser meta, some will build a cut throat meta, some will build an intentionally jank meta. Everyone gets a chance at their preferred meta having it's day in the sun, and the card and deck variety goes way up. The downside is you need a consistent playgroup, and most of the players need some disposable income (though slightly upgraded precons, intentionally jank, and battlecruiser metas can be built on the cheap).
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • posted a message on Run more interaction! Run more fast mana! Or: The death of interesting edh deckbuilding
    Quote from Carthage »
    Quote from Lithl »
    Quote from Onering »
    Chronic misanthropic contrarian yells at cloud, the thread, part 27: "knowing how to build decks ruins the game" edition.
    Indeed. I feel like this thread should be exhibit A on adding downvotes to the forum.


    The forums has an ignore function if you care, I have had onering on it for years.


    This is pretty funny. Until the post describing this thread, I haven't done anything to this guy. I've disagreed with him, but that probably describes 90% of this forum. I think that about sums him up.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • posted a message on Run more interaction! Run more fast mana! Or: The death of interesting edh deckbuilding
    Chronic misanthropic contrarian yells at cloud, the thread, part 27: "knowing how to build decks ruins the game" edition.
    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
  • posted a message on War of the Spark: Forsaken summary posted on reddit
    Quote from user_938036 »
    Quote from Perkunas687 »
    Hello all,

    Can anyone confirm for me what happened to Dovin Baan, and whether Kaya can now planeswalk with non-walkers?

    I saw it mentioned in the original synopsis, but it seemed to have limited info. I don't know if Dovin is dead-dead, or 'dead . . . . ? Wink '.

    Thanks in advance.
    Dovin is dead dead. Killed on screen and his body was found by a reliable narrator.

    Kaya can planeswalk with essentially anyone. It's just 'harder'. This is part of her ghost power. Which is bull because Jaya straight up tells her before she tries that even ghosts die in the blind eternities.

    These are the two worst developments to come out of Forsaken. I don't know why these are glossed over and the status of ships is hotly discussed.
    Mostly what Ree Wicker already said, so no use in retreading that ground.

    As for the Kaya plot point, can't speak for Weisman, but other writers seem tired with the post-mending limitations.

    Negatives:
    Venser tried inventing a plane-traveling ship like the Weatherlight to help rescue Mirrans, but he died before he could complete his work.
    The Weatherlight is essentially landlocked on Dominaria and can't be used for its intended purpose.
    The portals that connected Wildfire - Rabiah - Dominaria for travel and commerce no longer work.

    Positives:
    Nicol Bolas's Lazotep Gateway
    Jiang and his dog Mowu
    Kaya and Rat

    Because you fall in one of two camps for planar travel:
    1) Post-mending
    2) Pre-mending

    Personal headcanon: The mending is unraveling and that the efforts that took place to fix it were merely a temporary solution.

    I personally have my bias and fall in the pre-mending category. Because the stories told then are impossible feats now, like the story of Belbe for example from the Phyrexia arc can never happen. You don't get a moving piece like the artwork for Belbe's Portal in a post-mending world for non-walkers when the default answer is to make everyone a walker.

    That the only way they could even come close to this same type of storytelling was when Dack Fayden couldn't walk away when the Immortal Sun was active which resulted in his untimely death.


    If the rules of the mending become so screwed up that it effectively undoes it, I'm all for that. The mending was always a mistake, from the start, it ruined Magic story's most unique facet, the Planeswalkers. Instead of focusing on plane bound characters that could only go to other planes with help from magical machines and planeswalkers, with those planeswalkers being larger than life demi gods looming over the story and occasionally interacting in cool ways, we've gone to focusing on planeswalkers all the time but taking away most of what made them a cool concept. When most planeswalkers are no different than any other regular character then they just aren't any more interesting than any other regular character, because being able to hop planes was never the interesting thing about planeswalkers (especially when the planes are usually just worlds of hats). In fact, it makes them LESS interesting than other characters, because they have an innate bug out button they can push when ***** goes sideways, whereas plane bound characters are much more invested in and connected to their planes, and thus face higher stakes and more compelling motivations.

    As a side note, the world of hats model combined with following neowalkers around everywhere has had the effect of making the multiverse seem much smaller. When the world of hats model started pre mending, each world was occupied by unique characters you were just meeting and would leave when you left the world. There could be some connections to other worlds via planeswalkers, like Karn on Mirrodin or Bolas being involved with Kamigawa, but again those connections involved god like figures who were for the most part in the background. The result was that the worlds felt truly cut off from each other, even when we had the Weatherlight and planar portals, because without those contrivances we weren't following characters from plane to plane (Weatherlight again is the major exception, but that was basically putting a crew on the Enterprise). With neowalkers, you just have superheros that you follow from story to story, so when they hop from Ixalan to Innistrad to Kaladesh you don't get the feel that they are going to different universes, but just different continents on the same world that have different kinds of magic. Typing it out right now, I realize that the only difference between a story where Ixalan, Kaladesh, Tarkir, Theros and Innistrad are different worlds vs one where they are distant continents on the same world is that the former actually has LESS potential, because if they were on the same world you'd be able to set up a story where all those places find each other and interact.

    But yeah, rambling aside, the god like immortal shapeshifting (often mad) beings that were oldwalkers were always more interesting than the superhero neowalkers. We already had superhero type characters in the old story, they were just plane bound characters. Oldwalkers were something that tied Magic closer to fantasy and gave Magic something that other properties didn't have. Neowalkers just don't stand out from the crowd, which is why the Gatewatch was immediately, derisively, and correctly labeled the Jacetus League. And all this was supposedly done so that the story could focus on the characters and spin better stories than in the past. Well, after almost 15 years I'd say that's failed miserably. Nothing that's been put out since then has been as good as the Thran, Kamigawa, Urza's Saga, or even the pretty paint by numbers Weatherlight saga or the intentionally pulpy Ravnica block. There's been a few great web stories, but overall the arcs have been pretty meh. And that's just quality, the creativity has been way down as well. The most outside the box flat out awesome thing has been Bolas' eternals plot, which can be described as a dragon wizard enslaves an Egypt plane to farm warriors to turn into zombies with which to attack a city world via stargate. Unfortunately, it falls apart for being a letdown in practice and serving the ultimate and tired motivation of Bolas wants to nom nom nom sparks so he can become a god like being again, which is honestly why I was rooting for him to succeed because its almost like meta commentary that Bolas realized how much neowalkers sucked and wanted to kill them off as a concept so Oldwalkers could come back. Compare that to the insanity of Invasion, which featured as a subplot 9 insane god wizards strapping into mechs to nuke Robot Hell with a bomb powered by the souls of gods. That's so over the top 90's metal its a statue of Jack Black made out of 70's vans with murals painted on their sides. I'd rather see confusing cluster****s that shred the continuity like Scourge than confusing cluster****s that shred the continuity like Scars of Mirrodin, because at least the former is a weird mescaline trip while the latter is some banal nonsense.

    Posted in: Magic Storyline
  • posted a message on War of the Spark: Forsaken summary posted on reddit
    Quote from 5colors »
    Quote from user_938036 »
    Quote from Perkunas687 »
    Hello all,

    Can anyone confirm for me what happened to Dovin Baan, and whether Kaya can now planeswalk with non-walkers?

    I saw it mentioned in the original synopsis, but it seemed to have limited info. I don't know if Dovin is dead-dead, or 'dead . . . . ? Wink '.

    Thanks in advance.
    Dovin is dead dead. Killed on screen and his body was found by a reliable narrator.

    Kaya can planeswalk with essentially anyone. It's just 'harder'. This is part of her ghost power. Which is bull because Jaya straight up tells her before she tries that even ghosts die in the blind eternities.

    These are the two worst developments to come out of Forsaken. I don't know why these are glossed over and the status of ships is hotly discussed.


    People have complained about those points, how Chandra and Nissa where handled,as DJK3654 said, hits on sociopolitical issues that have more real life meaning to people and thus its getting the bigger focus.

    Also I'd add more people had been writing off Dovin as dead, just took the sequel to kill him.

    As for the Kaya plot point, can't speak for Weisman, but other writers seem tired with the post-mending limitations.

    Negatives:
    Venser tried inventing a plane-traveling ship like the Weatherlight to help rescue Mirrans, but he died before he could complete his work.
    The Weatherlight is essentially landlocked on Dominaria and can't be used for its intended purpose.
    The portals that connected Wildfire - Rabiah - Dominaria for travel and commerce no longer work.

    Positives:
    Nicol Bolas's Lazotep Gateway
    Jiang and his dog Mowu
    Kaya and Rat

    Because you fall in one of two camps for planar travel:
    1) Post-mending
    2) Pre-mending


    I think you just help realized why the Kaya thing is so bothersome to me. With Bolas bridge he need to have an undead army coated in magical rock to keep them safe so, Mowu seems to be a living statue and can survive by becoming inorganic and Wrenn bounding with tree folk most likely has them become a part of her body so her spark can protect them both. With Kaya she can take anyone with her with almost no limit (just a risk which we will most likely never see) and nothing about her ghost powers ever screamed she could take people with her on walks.
    Which creates a fairly relevant plothole.

    Question: If Kaya can just shepherd the dead across planes, why did Nicol Bolas need a planar gate to shepherd the dead from Amonkhet to Ravnica? Such as quietly sending small insurgent groups of elite lazotep forces into abandoned districts.

    Answer: That wasn't originally a power Kaya had. Her abilities were assassinating ghosts and phasing through walls.


    If her abilities have been turned into "she can turn into a ghost and do ghost *****" then I'll approve of it if we get to see her possess a villain and make them punch themselves in the nads. We're already at that level of camp, they might as well embrace it.
    Posted in: Magic Storyline
  • posted a message on [[Official]] General Discussion of the Official Multiplayer Banlist
    The biggest strike against RN is that it is extremely repetitive. It creates a loop that does not go arbitrary (without other chicanery in the mix anyway), which isn't ideal. If RN is working, you are just repeatedly casting RN for the rest of the game until you no longer need to, and usually cycling through the same 2-3 creatures.

    I don't think that this is enough to keep it banned any longer. We already have Meren being repetitive graveyard city and Whisper can pull of an RN impression easily enough, when she doesn't obsolete it that is.
    Posted in: Commander Rules Discussion Forum
  • posted a message on War of the Spark: Forsaken summary posted on reddit
    Im fine with Chandra being bi in the future, but I always hated Chandra/Nissa shipping. They had no chemistry,and the only thing their relationship offered was being a lesbian relationship. A lot of that comes from Nissa being boring as hell though, so there's no reason that Chandra can't be shipped with another woman down the road and have it actually work (and they really should keep her bi).
    Posted in: Magic Storyline
  • posted a message on Worst Commander
    General Jarkeld is pretty bad.

    Ishi-Ishi, Akki Crackshot basically does nothing except weakly hate on a tribe that isn't overly common.


    Posted in: Commander (EDH)
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