People are logical, profit-driven creatures. If you make it unprofitable to commit an action, that action will stop. You don't have to attack or kill or imprison every man; all you have to do is let people know that if you attack your wife (or your husband, but that's hardly a raging epidemic), they're liable to **** you up in return or you can go to jail.
How many people decided it was unprofitable to be Jews after the Holocaust, and changed their religion? Did the dark ages manage to stamp out all rational thought? People stopped committing crimes after we developed a legal system, right? Australia banned some video game or another for being too bloody, and that stopped everyone from playing it because they instantly adopted the same moral attitude? ... is there a single instance throughout history where that reasoning has ever worked?
But yes, hypothetically, if you were to ask me, "Should there be swift justice against countries who ignore the rights of their citizens?" my answer would be yes, emphatically.
Unfortunately, it's not the big, bad government oppressing it's citizens; it's just how their culture works. Would you kill half the population of the planet to protect the rights of the other half?
I think approximately 50% of the Earth's population would directly and greatly benefit from it, and I think the long term the other half would mostly find it a benefit. So the majority of the world, yes.
No, they wouldn't. Because we'd suffer the same fate that Germany did in WWII; and the only effect, long or short term, would be a lot of deaths.
Why do you think Martin Luther King Jr. succeeded where the civil war failed? Because kicking people's asses won't make them change their minds.
As Iraq has shown, it hasn't worked when we pooled all our resources against one country, so what makes you think that attacking places like China and India too will have any effect other than us swiftly losing a bloody war? We can't keep a lid on somewhat over 25 million people, and you think we can beat two billion?
If I could, I would that there were a real international government where states that abuse and ignore the rights of women were held accountable, by force if necessary
Great, so instead of just being in one quagmire, we've managed to invade the entire planet to try to force them to adhere to our views. Right or not, do you honestly think that would end well, for anyone?
So what you're saying is that I should draw a relationship between the level of difficulty found in a) peacefully negotiating the adherence to internationally acknowledged women's rights laws treaties, and b) resolving a military situation of the scale of Rwanda or Kosovo?
There's no wonder that the U.N. can't negotiate with a faction that has declared open intents of hostility, but you can't generalize that they still would be unable to do so with a more or less friendly government. You need a better argument than some ad hominem from the Devil's Bible.
The thing is, you do have to consider how hard (or impossible) it would be to accomplish something. Stopping an army from killing a bunch of people takes another army. Changing the cultural attitude of an entire nation ingrained over thousands of years? That can only come from the inside.
The reason we haven't gone up against most of the rest of the world to stop the injustices is because we'd have to go up against most of the rest of the world to stop the injustices. You've seen how the general attitude in Iraq changed after we invaded their country and tried to change the traditional values of their culture? Oh, wait...
Dralnu switches from control deck to beatdown to control many times during the game. It's important to know when you need to be aggressive with teferi/teachings/vampire and when you need to be passive.
This is true. However, you have a habit of saying something, then assuming it makes an unrelated point right.
This discussion isn't whether you play the deck as control or beatdown, but how much resources you're willing to put into Tefari. You put all your resources into Tefari, because he usually wins the game for you. I put less resources into Tefari, so that even if my opponent can deal with him, I still have the resources to win without him. Both are perfectly valid strategies, and you can win using either of them.
Similarly, you may or may not view Think Twice as essential, depending on how much faith you have in your deck's long term ability to gain card advantage (MT, Dralnu, StS, Spellburst, ect). I want more redundancy in my counters, and Jiaozy wants more redundancy in his card advantage. That doesn't make either of us right or wrong; we just have different strategies.
First off, I'd cut the Evacuation, Flashfreezes, and Damnations. Before I'd add things back in, I'd want to know if you figure on seeing more aggro, control, or about average of both. If you intend of facing aggro, I'd put in more Seize the Soul, maybe some Stinkweed Imp, a Spellburst, and the last Spell Snare (mainly sideboard). If you want to face control, I'd recommend Think Twice, Sudden Death, Dismal Failure, and Imp's Mischief (taking out Remand, as Jiaozy said). If you figure on facing both, well... just try to see what works best for you, I guess. Overall the list is pretty decent.
Perhaps by voting yes you are protecting your own life for the moment. But for how long? What kind of government are you supporting by voting yes?
How can you start a revolution against a clearly corrupt government if you're dead? Vote yes so you can personally make sure the people in charge pay! :xd:
The thing is, for TT to actually work as early card draw, your opponent has to do nothing worth countering for two turns. That's just fine vs control, but pretty unlikely vs aggro. Against quicker decks (IE pretty much any deck that causes us problems), TT just cantrips early game, and doesn't provide actual card advantage until I should be winning anyway, or am pretty desperate.
I still don't want to replace a counter with Remand, but Remand does do everything TT does early game and more. It helps against aggro more than TT does; and against control, sticking Tefari is arguably the most important thing, and it sort of helps with that too. I'm still not sold on Remand being awesome in this deck, but I do think I agree that it's better than TT.
this is incorrect. situation that happens a lot maybe not the exact cards, but say teferi is in play, you're at 4. opponent has char. his eot, you have skeltal vamp in hand and rewind, guess what, no more worries about char and instant vamp. thats huge.
Yes, if you have Tefari, Skeletal Vampire, Rewind, and all your opponent has is a lone anything, you win. My point is that Remand + Tefari will make it so that you have a Rewind to fight off maybe three spells, which is a touch harder. Not an impossible situation, but there is a downside.
Ok well regardless, I'm seeing an incredibly easy solution to all of this. Most of your builds run 3-4 think twices. Replace Think twices with remands.
In addition to that, consider how important it is for Dralnu to survive early game and ramp up lands. Dralnu has all of seven 2cc counters.
On the other hand, that sounds like a good plan. For the record, Dralnu decks usually have around 10 counters that cost two or less; you're kinda forgetting Spell Snare there. But yeah, usually TT is helpful against control but fairly useless against aggro, because by the time I have the spare mana to play + flash it, usually it means nothing threatening is happening. I do worry a bit about the small amount of card advantage in the deck (MT, Dralnu, and... if you do something really clever, I guess), but TT really hasn't been an all-star for me in this deck. Not just stalling so you can drop Tefari, but even stalling so you can use a Cancel or Rewind can make the difference in some matches, and it will help the deck's achilles heel (the early game) more than TT has been helping, at least when I play it.
To argue the other side, I'd like to point out that Tefari does practically nothing on his own (except against other counter decks, against which he is unquestionably worth protecting), so you need to have a decent number of cards to back him up with to actually win. 'Tempo cards' will make it easier to resolve Tefari, but you'll probably end up with less options after he enters play*, because neither Tefari nor 'tempo cards' affect the board. There's advantages to both sides.
EDIT: Kinda a risk/reward thing. Some people like going all out on plan A, and some people like to keep a plan B in the wings. I've always favored reliability over explosivity, but I totally get someone liking it the other way around.
*EDIT2: Come to think of it, you'd also lose more resources if you put them into Tefari and still can't get him to stick. Two smaller disadvantages vs one larger advantage. 'course, this is more than just Remand, but discussing the overall strategy.
I think Lesurgo brings up a good point- do you see Tefari as an end or a means? If your plan is to resolve Tefari and ride him to victory, then tempo can be your friend. If you veiw Tefari as quite useful but not essential to victory, you probably don't want to stall.
That's probably why this issue is so polarized. I'd always seen Tefari as very, very helpful, but he wasn't the center of my deck. My deck is centered around counters and Mystical Teachings, so I don't have anything to stall into, and I think a few other people here share this view. However, SRdude and some others center their deck around Tefari, which makes stalling into him useful.
I guess this is another example of the number of ways you can build/play this deck; I just hadn't realized it. So I think that both sides can be right, not to simply save feelings and discussion, but because they actually had different strategies all the time, and just hadn't realized it.
How many people decided it was unprofitable to be Jews after the Holocaust, and changed their religion? Did the dark ages manage to stamp out all rational thought? People stopped committing crimes after we developed a legal system, right? Australia banned some video game or another for being too bloody, and that stopped everyone from playing it because they instantly adopted the same moral attitude? ... is there a single instance throughout history where that reasoning has ever worked?
Unfortunately, it's not the big, bad government oppressing it's citizens; it's just how their culture works. Would you kill half the population of the planet to protect the rights of the other half?
- Torchling isn't that great anyway. Morphling wouldn't even be broken if printed right now, and Torchling is quite a fair bit worse than it.
No, they wouldn't. Because we'd suffer the same fate that Germany did in WWII; and the only effect, long or short term, would be a lot of deaths.
Why do you think Martin Luther King Jr. succeeded where the civil war failed? Because kicking people's asses won't make them change their minds.
As Iraq has shown, it hasn't worked when we pooled all our resources against one country, so what makes you think that attacking places like China and India too will have any effect other than us swiftly losing a bloody war? We can't keep a lid on somewhat over 25 million people, and you think we can beat two billion?
Great, so instead of just being in one quagmire, we've managed to invade the entire planet to try to force them to adhere to our views. Right or not, do you honestly think that would end well, for anyone?
The thing is, you do have to consider how hard (or impossible) it would be to accomplish something. Stopping an army from killing a bunch of people takes another army. Changing the cultural attitude of an entire nation ingrained over thousands of years? That can only come from the inside.
EDIT: Or what Blinking Spirit said. <.<
This is true. However, you have a habit of saying something, then assuming it makes an unrelated point right.
This discussion isn't whether you play the deck as control or beatdown, but how much resources you're willing to put into Tefari. You put all your resources into Tefari, because he usually wins the game for you. I put less resources into Tefari, so that even if my opponent can deal with him, I still have the resources to win without him. Both are perfectly valid strategies, and you can win using either of them.
Similarly, you may or may not view Think Twice as essential, depending on how much faith you have in your deck's long term ability to gain card advantage (MT, Dralnu, StS, Spellburst, ect). I want more redundancy in my counters, and Jiaozy wants more redundancy in his card advantage. That doesn't make either of us right or wrong; we just have different strategies.
How can you start a revolution against a clearly corrupt government if you're dead?
I still don't want to replace a counter with Remand, but Remand does do everything TT does early game and more. It helps against aggro more than TT does; and against control, sticking Tefari is arguably the most important thing, and it sort of helps with that too. I'm still not sold on Remand being awesome in this deck, but I do think I agree that it's better than TT.
Yes, if you have Tefari, Skeletal Vampire, Rewind, and all your opponent has is a lone anything, you win.
On the other hand, that sounds like a good plan. For the record, Dralnu decks usually have around 10 counters that cost two or less; you're kinda forgetting Spell Snare there.
EDIT: Kinda a risk/reward thing. Some people like going all out on plan A, and some people like to keep a plan B in the wings. I've always favored reliability over explosivity, but I totally get someone liking it the other way around.
*EDIT2: Come to think of it, you'd also lose more resources if you put them into Tefari and still can't get him to stick. Two smaller disadvantages vs one larger advantage. 'course, this is more than just Remand, but discussing the overall strategy.
That's probably why this issue is so polarized. I'd always seen Tefari as very, very helpful, but he wasn't the center of my deck. My deck is centered around counters and Mystical Teachings, so I don't have anything to stall into, and I think a few other people here share this view. However, SRdude and some others center their deck around Tefari, which makes stalling into him useful.
I guess this is another example of the number of ways you can build/play this deck; I just hadn't realized it. So I think that both sides can be right, not to simply save feelings and discussion, but because they actually had different strategies all the time, and just hadn't realized it.