MTG Salvation

Guys, I've effectively quit Magic at this point. Like, I sold 90% of my cards and haven't played in almost a year. But this still managed to reach me! I occasionally watch MTG videos and Jeremy's ban video came up in my recommended section. The Professor, which is the main channel that I do watch, laid the heart of the matter out nicely. Someone was hurt bad enough by Jeremy's repeated, unsolicited, and frankly quite crude criticisms to leave the MTG community and that person was a highly visible and well liked individual. I work with 1st graders at an after school program and we work hard to foster a sense of community between the kids themselves and with the adults who care for them. They all can tell you that doing something mean is bad for the whole community because if one person is hurt then the rest must take stock of the situation and form a layer of social protection. Jeremy has benefited from way too much social protection within the MTG community for way too long. One thing I always have to remind the kids about is that even when you don't agree with someone or they make you mad you have no right to punish them. Jeremy has the right to free speech but at the same time he has no right to question Christine's level of worth to the MTG community or shame her for the way she raises money. One of my favorite cosplay creators, Cat Cosplay, recently asked for money from their followers because they were taking on a lot of projects, which said followers asked for, and their 9 to 5 wasn't cutting it. So Christine's request isn't unusual nor is it a plea for attention. The thing that bothers me the most is that I think Jeremy unconsciously went after Christine because she's a woman and women are perceived as more vulnerable. A.E. Marling, a male MTG cosplayer, raises money the same way Christine does and Jeremy hasn't gone near him. So clearly Jeremy sensed that Christine was emotionally vulnerable and decided to make bullying her a thing because she didn't fight back. Becoming "internet famous" because some guy is making fun of you or just doesn't like you can be downright dangerous and there should be some consequences for putting another person at risk just to get thumbs up and subscribers.

Cheers Sally folks, I've missed you and it's sad that it took an outrage for me to return.

Endless One is actually kind of scary. It's a make your own monster that literally any deck can just throw in, for Ula's sake! People are talking about it at 7 or 8 but it's solid at 5 or 6 too. It has no fancy bells or whistles but it would be too powerful if it had any abilities. Imagine this guy with reach or vigilance. Those are two of the more mundane abilities but on a creature of indeterminate size they could actually be relevant.

Quote from TurboTurbot »

It's not the players, it's the prizes. Most players labeled as 'overly competitive' appreciate a chance to play stuff they like that isn't Tier 1. Once you require an entry fee and put up prizes, there's no incentive for running something that isn't a good bet.

Use FNM to meet and network with other players and arrange some meet-ups on your own time to do what you want.

The whole entry fee model of prize support actually pushes casuals away. Paying $5 to reward the people who are already winning is insane and unless your FNM gets 10 or fewer players shouldn't be a thing. None of the major stores in my area charge entry fees for FNM. The why of it is kind of a long story* but needless to say that attendance improved drastically once the entry fee was eliminated. If a store has a decent event calendar then not charging for FNM is feasible and pretty smart. Players still need drinks, snacks, dice, pen/paper, singles, packs, etc so no money is really lost and prize support is entirely unaffected.

*

I've been playing MTG for 11 years and been an off and on FNM player for 10 of those years. What you have today is nothing compared to what it was like when I first jumped into tournament play. High level event grinders ruled FNM and anyone not playing a Tier 1 deck just didn't win or have a good time. When Planeswalker Points were introduced FNM became the fun, inclusive event it had been advertised to be in years past. Now people come to FNM to win AND have fun! Let me put this another way. Prior to Planeswalker Points the biggest FNM in my area had 30 people tops. The demise of grinders allowed more casual players to attempt playing in a store and now the smallest FNM is 20 people(the store is new though) and the biggest is 140 to 150 strong.

FNM may be hardcore and cutthroat in some areas but the current Standard environment is annoyingly diverse. You can plan your SB around certain staples and strategies but there isn't really one unassailable deck. One guy in my area consistently T4's with an U/R Ensoul Artifact control deck and another is doing well with Abzan Constellation. The more money you throw at your deck, the better it will perform but you can make some cool/fun/weird decks right now and not do too terribly. *sigh* I'll take a wide variety of hardcore decks to playing against 4 round of Faeries, Affinity, CawBlade, or Jund(I recognize it's degenerate nature though I did play with it!) any day.

OP should keep playing Standard and also explore other formats. Standard is the flagship format but Limited is something everyone should learn and Modern and Legacy allow you to play with a bigger pool of cards and have a bigger casual following than Standard.

It seems like there's some sort of misunderstanding between the people that currently own the cards that are being counterfeited and those that want reprints so the demand for fakes will wane. I know it doesn't seem like it now but the fakes will soon have an impact on you. Every trade or sale will now put a thought to the effect of "I hope this isn't fake." in the back of your mind. That poor bum at your EDH table that suddenly has ABU duals will make you distrustful of your peers. At some point you will want to cash in and the store owner who has known you for years will demand the bend test for every card above $50. The collectors that the RL was meant to protect will stop buying and collecting because the integrity of the supply has been breached.

But go on ahead and think that it won't happen to you and that the supply of fakes will stay small.

Christianity doesn't do it for me for so many reasons. One big reason is that there aren't any new teachings. If a religion were genuine then it seems like the deity wouldn't just stop sending down messages. The lack of recent revelations and universally recognized prophets leads me to conclude that the god of the Christians doesn't exist. Pretty much every religion suffers from this though so I'm not trying to single Christianity out.

Another big reason I'm not being a Christian is that it hasn't added much in the way of social good. I know people are going to say that churches are some of the biggest charities and were often patrons of science but that's glossing over the truth. The truth is that churches needed to be charitable given how much tithing hurt poor believers and how much the wars they fought on behalf of their own greed cost everyone in human coin. The church might have funded a lot of scientific research but the cost was that none of it could contradict the Bible or church doctrine. Later on Christianity was used as a way to justify slavery so Europeans could rest easy at night and so that slaves would be pacified and accept their enslavement as the will of God.

Lastly, I think Christianity has made people more ignorant. When I hear news reports of people refusing lifesaving medical treatment because they're waiting for the direct intervention of God or of parents not vaccinating because they feel prayer is a better shield against measles I cringe. If you know something will save your life but choose to turn your back on it why would your deity save you? What if that chemo was God's way of curing your cancer? Then there's the matter of creationism. It's just plain wrong and yet there is a generation of children being raised to accept it as fact. I'm honestly afraid for the day these kids come into the leadership of the US because the very basis of their education is faulty.

Quote from billydaman

Every single example of discrimination listed by proponents of privilege has been in the past. You guys continually use history. Its only fitting I write in the past tense when discussing the issue. You guys are presenting these historical examples of discrimination not me.

Let's talk about Donald Sterling. Not specifically about him but about his overall attitude. The fact is that right now there are a ton of people who feel the same way he does. People who have people of color as employees and coworkers and they're in a position to directly affect those people's lives. As a person of color there is always the fear that your boss(who will inevitably be White in most cases) is a racist or merely ignorant and that their attitude will be accepted or ignored by the higher ups. What does this have to do with White privilege? White people never have to worry that their employer thinks they are incompetent due to their race. Even if their boss is a person of color they will still be treated better than their co-workers who are people of color.

One big reason White privilege is so frequently denied or minimized by White people is because of scale. Microaggressions make up the majority of the White privilege offenses a person of color experiences in their lifetime and often they aren't responded to because the White person who offends will say that you're being too sensitive. Another White privilege is being able to tell people how to feel about racism and feel utterly confident in your moral superiority. This thread demonstrates that pretty well. Anyway, if microaggressions are cast aside as people being irrational how can something so large as institutionalized racism have a chance of being intelligently discussed, much less eradicated?

I am so confused by this discussion. It's like people don't know where the term white privilege came from or have clue as to it's context.

The term white privilege isn't about racism. It's used to describe the institutionalized systems that are in place in the United States that give it's White citizens more advantageous outcomes in pretty much every aspect of every day life. It doesn't imply that White people are racists but rather the recipients of something they didn't earn and benefit from. You can't talk it away. Calling the term racist won't erase it or it's effects from reality.

The point of competitive Magic is to play a reason other than "for the lolz". It doesn't matter if you lose or win at casual Magic because nothing is really at stake. Even at the FNM level, you're playing for your pride, to test your skills and knowledge of the game, and of course for fabulous prizes.

Of course there's luck involved. You have a 60 card deck, finely tuned to your specifications, and you have a certainly likelihood of drawing what you need based solely on shuffling and the caliber of the resources in your deck. Luck is a part of pretty much every TCG and just something we all have to live with. *shrug*

Next time he should do fedoras or wolf t-shirts.

I'd want more information. In artistic endeavors just having a computer often isn't enough. You need peripherals and expensive software as well. So try to get the whole story because it would suck to give money and have the whole need not be met. I'm a fan of the arts and give when I can but you need to decide if you are as well.

Now there are TWO black guys in the galaxy far far away

Stardust Dragon is legit.

This card doesn't stand a ghost of a chance!

Quote from Incanur »

A Serra PW focused on enchantments would have been infinitely cooler. Really, when do we get our enchantress general? Haven't we been asking for it for long enough?

"Rabbi, we've waited all our lives for the Messiah. Wouldn't now be a good time for him to come?"
"We'll have to wait for him someplace else..."
-Fiddler on the Roof

And the white Volrath's Stronghold too.

Why the **** wasn't this slobad?

Philosophy is just a form of applied mathematics. Or misapplied mathematics, anyway.

I blame Michael Jackson for his campaign to reappropriate the word 'Bad' to mean 'Good' in the 80s.

I agree that this is a stupid change, but there are many words in English that also mean their direct opposite:

• sanction (to give official permission; to express official disapproval)
• oversight (to observe something carefully; to not see something due to carelessness)
• cleave (to cling or adhere; to split or sever)
• off (activated "the alarm is going off"; deactivate "turn off the alarm")

etc.

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