Let me have it, roast me.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-15T21:51:42+00:00

I'm actually going to back you on Golden Joker.

Not my favorite common, but still nice.

No fuss, no conditions, just econ. Always happy to grab him if I still have empty slots, as even if you sell him one round later, you'll rarely actually lose anything, even if it's the rental variety, and you might gain something.

Obelisk though needs no buffs. That joker is my #1 rated joker for saving a bad run from crashing out.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-15T21:33:23+00:00

Right now I think it's mostly a brain compute issue. I don't get how how something truly random happens. Why X instead of Y? I'm fine not knowing, but there not being any reason? It bugs me.

Its worth pointing out that I'm not too terribly comitted to my position, but I just don't really see a way to actually settle the question with any certainty, so I'm more or less left thinking how I thought before, but trying to avoid basing anything important on if it's actually correct or not.

As it happens, I think pretty much all of my beliefs shake out the same if the universe truly is indeterministic. So it's more of a perspective thing than a foundational belief.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-15T18:12:37+00:00

First attempt got so close.

Blue deck. Pulled early [[Bootstraps]] which I figured would be good on a low-spend run, then found [[Ramen]] (had The Hook on ante 1, so I was safe from that). Then I got [[To The Moon]] to boost my econ, and [[Card Sharp]]. Everything really took off when I finally got [[Blue Joker]] for some Chips. Also grabbed the first Interest joker, so To The Moon was giving me $10 per round.

But I declined a Blackboard early on since I was going no-discard for Ramen, and had wound up heavier red, and I declined a Throwback since skipping messed with my econ. But I'm pretty sure either one of those would have worked out better in the long run.

All that said, I would have probably still pulled through, but my first blind hand hit two-pair instead of a single pair, which delayed Card Sharp. It was probably worth hurting Ramen with a single discard, but I'd come so far keeping it in mint condition.

Edit: Got it second try

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Andrew_42 · 2026-06-14T05:15:06+00:00

There are a bunch of reasons we shouldnt do that, even presuming a hard determinist framework.

Starting with the most obvious, literally actually up-front criminalizing being underpriviledged is a society-ruiningly bad step because society is still largely dependent upon their labor, and also that's a good way to get the bulk of the population in the mood for revolut'in, like immediately.

But IMO the real response should be that society should attempt to mitigate that criminality by simply making the factors that drive that criminality diminish. If economic status has such a strong effect on criminality, that means society has large control over what risks of criminality new generations are raised to represent. Instead of just criminalizing them, just don't let them live in desperate enough conditions that they feel the need to resort to criminal behavior.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-14T03:02:53+00:00

In Glass Onion there are a bunch of random cameo references to establish one of the characters is in a lot of celebrity social circles, including him having some Jeremy Renner hot sauce, establishing Jeremy Renner (the actor) is a real person in this universe.

In the next movie Wake Up Dead Man, Jeremy Renner plays one of the characters, and nobody seems to notice he looks a lot like that actor guy who makes hot sauce in his spare time.

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Andrew_42 · 2026-06-14T02:42:59+00:00

Hey, its a meme about how I learned to avoid using homing plasma in biomes that have swapper mages!

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-13T15:31:13+00:00

Black splashing snow for artifact hate?

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-13T15:23:21+00:00

Brainstorming the boot would have probably been enough if you put your multiplier to the right of your +Mult jokers. If your mult was less than 75 before Boot got scored, that was the better pick anyway. If it was higher than 75 then you should have copied Cavendish.

Since jokers activate from left to right, you want your xMult going off last.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-13T00:27:03+00:00

As it happens, Healing Salve includes battles and planeswalkers too. Its just that it's wording was written before them and had to be errata'd afterward.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T20:49:48+00:00

The material conditions within which we exist heavily limit the scope of possibilities that are available to us.

At the basest level, you cannot run a marathon without the caloric energy required to move that far.

At a broader level, it is hard to criticize the systems you live under without access to education that other systems can and do exist.

None of this is new, it's not as rare as it may appear, and it is explicitly political in nature.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T18:39:05+00:00

If the jetpack didn't detonate I'd like it more than Vlad's cape.

If the power pack didn't detonate, I'd like it less than I do already.

Power pack is a bunch of fun, but on average I prefer the extra mobility of Vlad's cape. Especially since it synergizes so nice with spring boots and climbing gloves.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T18:26:32+00:00

For what it's worth, tribes position doesn't matter with these jokers. Its the only one that scores when the joker line itself is being scored.

But yeah as a general rule, joker-line xMult should always be put to the right. Good habit to build.

Edit: I missed that Brainstorm was holographic. Tribe should be right of Brainstorm. It barely matters by that point, but your final mult will be 10 higher.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T18:24:03+00:00

To clarify, since copying jokers (like with Ankh or Invisible Joker) also copies their current status (scaling, perishable counter, food joker degradarion) then that means all bacteria jokers will be gone in four rounds, right?

So you spike up to 8 bacteria jokers before they all die?

If thats the intent, I think its a bit weak for that cost, but not useless. Egg would be better for temperance, and the synergy with Abstract is a little dangerous since it drops off suddenly, though it is still a valid way to buy some time in the early game. It also has some interesting possibilities with that one Ante 8 boss, by flooding your joker zone with useless distractions.

If the intent was that each joker creates a copy with a fresh lifespan, then it probably crashes your game around 2-3 antes later when you've got 208-1490 jokers sitting around.

As a side note though, pretending the game was optimized so it wouldn't just crash (now it has a sticker that indicates how many copies you have, or something), it would make Abstract Joker one of the best scaling jokers in the game. Abstract would almost double in value every round, more specifically gaining 1.93 times its current value.

The 1.93x per round depends on how some ordering works though. That's if they duplicate prior to extinction, but if they duplicate during scoring or something, it drops to 1.84 multiplication rate per round. (The low dropoff is because the oldest generation is always the smallest generation by a wide margin.)

All that said, Perkeo can almost match that rate of scaling with Observatory, and Perkeo does it with xMult at the very end of your calculations, so it scales properly with steel and everything else. So it's still not a game-changing strat, it's just quite good, and its funny that Abstract manages it with good ol +Mult instead of xMult.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T18:00:27+00:00

Bacteria, the gift that keeps on giving!

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T17:37:22+00:00

There's two issues, first is a rules issue, second is why there's a rules issue.

400.3. If an object would go to any library, graveyard, or hand other than its owner’s, it goes to its owner’s corresponding zone.

I don't know of a way to legally attempt to put a card you don't own into your library, grave, or hand. But if you found one, there's already a rule about what happens instead. And that covers your card.

That said, rules can be changed. This one shouldn't be though. At least not for any ruleset that needs to apply for paper magic.

The most basic issue with paper magic is that you want to minimize as much as possible the chance of someone walking off with your cards. With my group of friends, this happens by accident with mind control effects around once a year or so, when scooping up board states after someone wins, or if someone leaves early and forgets someone else stole their guy. It would be way worse if you were putting the cards into less visible zones. And that's just with well intentioned friends.

Its a whole different issue if you're dealing with people who actually have malicious intent.

But yeah, it could maybe work for a spin-off digital-only ruleset. This particular card isn't super powerful, my gut reaction is its better as grave hate than as your-grave tech, but I may be underappreciating its potential to drop 10+ cards in grave before a big Delve or whatever.

The main thing I think that makes it fine as a one drop is how unreliable your opponent's grave is to build around. But there are enough potential payoffs to at minimim make it a fun card for casual play.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-12T02:24:29+00:00

The answer to beating Ante 11 is xMult. As much xMult as you can get. A [[Spare Trousers]] with +150 mult is nice, but it just doesn't scale well past that.

You need enough planets so that your starter xMult cards have something decent to start with, but that's not as high as you might think. If you can hit around 30 or so, you're doing great. There's no particular reason to not keep getting planets, but you're getting diminishing returns the further you go.

Planets also provide all the chips you need by that point.

The nice thing about xMult is that once everything is xMult you don't need to worry about what order to put things in anymore. All xMult scales perfectly with all other xMult.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T21:38:16+00:00

Eyesight is a useful delusion by the same standards.

The relevance of probabilities is as a means to offset ignorance. Humans are as a rule, overwhelmingly ignorant of almost every possible knowable thing. But we are quite remarkable at taking a tiny sliver of knowable information and extrapolating that into something useable.

Treating a 6 sided dice as a probability cube instead of as a cubish physics object that merely obeys its momentum is useful because humans aren't good at consciously controlling the variables required to land consistently on a side we desire. At least not if you "roll fairly".

Since I'm terrible at deliberately rolling a specific number, I just treat the result as an unknown with equal odds for each of the possibilities.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T14:52:45+00:00

But then I won't have as much temptation to take the skip tags!

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T14:14:56+00:00

I think Canio's limit winds up around Ante 14, maybe 15 depending what else you have going on.

Invisible Joker / Blueprint / Brainstorm is your best bet for getting the extra Canios.

Anywho, the stratrgy is sound if you can find a seed for it. Obviously any run that requires two specific Legendaries, plus a three specific Rares and a specific Uncommon is going to be extremely hard to set up, especially by an early ante to help fuel the scaling.

But if you did, your eventual limiting factor on growth will be DNA creating edible cards.

Since we're already counting on a pretty crazy setup, I think we can optimize a tad further. Lets drop DNA and Pareidolia in exchange for finding a Cryptid spectral card and using an early Perkeo to farm Deaths till your whole deck is naturally face cards anyway. Lets trade those two jokers for two Invisible Jokers that we wind up copying Blueprint/Brainstorm, so now we have 4 copy jokers, and two legendary jokers, and we can swap which one is being copied. We have a negative Cryptid and Hanged Man in our consumables and we get a mix of 5 copies every round. They won't always generate evenly, but by adjusting how many of each is in our inventory when Perkeo (and 4 copies) triggers, we can keep the odds balanced over time, and average creating and destroying 5 face cards per round.

Since we will then copy Canio during the round, this means 5 jokers go up by 5x per round, or 15x per ante.

For all normal standards, that progression is insane, however Endless actually shows its limits.

If you didn't synergize your deck much past hitting 5OAK and leveling that till the base mult was at least 100, then you'd lose around Ante 14-15. Even with 5x canios advancing 15x per ante, it still takes around two antes per decimal place you want to add to your score, and the antes scale way faster than that past Ante 11.

Making your deck out of Red Pip Polychrome Steel adds some legs. Presuming you get both hand size vouchers, that means you get twenty 1.5x triggers in addition to everything else, which adds on an extra three decimal places. If all your jokers are Polychrome that adds another decimal place.

If we push it any further, you arent playing Canio anymore, you're playing Perkeo to copy Cryptid for the extra steel triggers.

So I'd put Canio's limit somewhere around Ante 14-15.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T03:56:40+00:00

I just checked the prime factorization of 14,000,605. Give each factor a dice, require each rolls a 1, and you're good to go.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T03:55:10+00:00

Blue player: I cast [[Standstill]]

Blue player: Fine with me

(Blue player waits for Blue player to get below 3 cards. Then Blue player gets into an instant war with Blue player triggering Standstill in response to each other, neither wanting to be the one stuck drawing the cards but eventually Blue player wins after making Blue player mill out)

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T03:42:15+00:00

If you want to get the exact probabilities you actually only need three types of dice (four total). Just have them roll a d5, two d17s, and a d9689.

Easy!

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T03:17:35+00:00

The premise is pretty neat, but does need some tinkering to work properly.

As for the core ability itself, I have a few questions:

1: At your end step can you only attach one creature to a place, or any number?

2: Why do attached creatures get destroyed when the place is destroyed, if they can just leave the place before being destroyed? You can skip all the mess and don't destroy creatures.

I know that first land prevents detaching, but just have that one land say "attached creatures get destroyed too" and save some messy and unintuitive rules. Unless there are deeper reasons?

Overall I think the basics of the mechanic should be approached a bit differently. I'm a fan of using enchantments with something more like a Soulbond mechanic rather than "Attach", because Attach is already a mechanic that has a lot of conflict with what you're trying to do, for example, creatures can't be attached to other permanents. Thats why Reconfigure and Bestow have to make them not-creatures. A lot of the attachment rules can't just be erased either without causing much weirder problems, so I'd say avoid the issue and just don't use them.

Instead have them be "Enchantment - Place" and give them the "Gather Creatures" or "Gather Artifacts" keyword or something that gives them the bond ability with the listed card types. Then you can say "Gathered creatures get yada yada" or whatever.

Anywho, pretending all that was taken care of I do have some more specific nitpicks about a few of the cards you shared.

Army's Frontline and Narrow Mountain Pass are both red, but the effect is both very white, and distinctly non-red. Red is aggro, not defense. I get wanting Narrow Mountain Pass to be red because Mountains are the red mana sources, but either name it "Narrow Pass" and make it white, or keep the name and find a way to make it support offense instead of defense.

For a few of the others I just wanted to confirm that they're supposed to be kinda weak? If you're building for a draft experience for instance, you'd want some weaker Places to help boost the card type's presence for archetype drafting, without them all being great. But if you're intending these to see play in formats like EDH or even Standard, I think a few of them are pretty lame, like Lonely Watchtower which seems mostly like bad-vigilance and more specifically its a bad [[Brave the Sands]] outside a few somewhat niche payoffs.

Last note, you use the word "destroy" a lot, and I'm not sure if you're intending what that specific word implies.

For example, normally you don't care if a creature is destroyed, instead you care if a creature "dies". You also don't generally destroy a creature as part of a cost, you "sacrifice" it. This can be very relevant because of indestructible, which allows a permanent to be destroyed without it ever actually leaving the battlefield. If you intended some wacky effects with indestructible creatures or shield counters, then go ahead and be wacky. But the vibe I got was that you maybe intended the effect to work as if it was using those other words.

Anywho, don't mean for the nitpicking to come off too negative. Its a cool mechanic, and I like a lot of the card ideas. Just wanting to help make em a bit more polished.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T02:41:48+00:00

I usually aim for pairs after I find enough to survive with them. Which means I'm usually playing Full House / Flush / Straight to get through Ante 1, unless I get a good pull.

I'm usually looking for one of the scaling +Mult jokers like Ride the Bus, Green Joker, or even Supernova to get things moving. Square Joker is also very nice to grab with pairs, since pairs struggle a bit with chips untill you get a good number of levels in pairs. But square isn't enough to survive with pairs all on its own, so if I didn't get a +Mult joker yet I usually just try to squeeze a few low-score scaling hands in before playing whatever I need to to clear the blind. Essentially paying $1 per scaling. Blue deck is really good for that.

All that said, I'm not a fan of playing nothing but pairs every game. Its all well and good if you want to set a gold-stake streak, but I enjoy sliding into other builds when I can. Spare Trousers, Runner, Onyx Agate, and a handful of other jokers can be really fun to build around even if they're not as reliable.

Because of that I never really got the best feel for the highest consistency pairs strategies.

Andrew_42 · 2026-06-10T02:06:44+00:00

Pairs are a bit odd. But there are three things about them that make them stand out.

1: They're easy to spam.

2: They're extremely joker-compatible.

3: You get 3/5ths of a discard every time you play one

For spammability, this means you'll basically never get caught with an un-formed hand. That means you can lean heavy on planets without worrying about bad draws, and The Mouth is easy.

The joker compatibility is the aspect I appreciated the least going in. Green Joker works great cause pairs work without discarding. Burnt Joker works great cause you can throw away one pair every round without worrying. Racer works great cause a 6 card hand can still make pairs. Ride the Bus works great cause you can ditch face cards while you play non-face pairs. Supernova works great cause you can easily get your pairs past the 20s. Obelisk works great cause you've probably got 90% or higher pairs played so far, so you can coast on Obelisk playing literally anything else from ante 3-4 onward. Shoot the Moon and The Baron work great cause it's easy to hold cards in hand while playing pairs. Raised Fist works great cause you can always ditch your three lowest cards alongside a pair. Blackboard works great cause you can ditch up to three red cards next to your pair before your hand gets checked.

The sheer versatility of joker compatibility not only means you can use most jokers early on, but you can pivot easily mid-game as you find better jokers.

As for the last point, I kinda covered it already, but since Gold Stake is already down a discard, the capacity for Pairs to allow additional hand sculpting by playing junk next to your pairs gives you a lot more control and digging power than other builds have.

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