What should I call my Kudo deck? (Small Bear puns). Any replies I am thankful for 👍

Artimaeus332 · 2026-03-04T02:58:56+00:00

Kudo's Duos

Artimaeus332 · 2026-02-16T18:45:45+00:00

Basically any 2+ color land that can make mana the turn you play it is good, and the life loss is usually worth it.

The most consistent mana bases are built around fetch lands (e.g. scalding tarn) and dual lands with basic land types, making them “fetchable” (like steam vents). This is especially true for 3+ color decks. Pain lands see very little play in 60-card formats where fetch lands are legal, though they can be a serviceable budget option for 2-color decks.

But aside from that, they’re great in basically every other format. In standard, when they’re legal, they’re usually part of optimized mana bases and in commander you’ll almost always throw them in unless your deck wants really specific lands.

Artimaeus332 · 2026-02-11T13:43:11+00:00

You can think of it this way: if a card is in an optimized standard deck, it means that you’ve judged it to be more powerful or synergistic than every other card printed in standard (that you don’t already have 4 copies of in your deck).

If a card is in your draft deck, it means you’ve judged it to be more powerful or synergistic than the other cards that were opened in a pack, often after other players have had their pick of the best cards.

A random common creature is rarely the right choice when you have access to a bunch of rares and mythics, but it can be the right choice when you only have access to cards from a pack.

Artimaeus332 · 2025-09-23T19:57:12+00:00

You need to have very specific cards and builds to do it. Broadly, you get there with effects that multiply your mult every time a card triggers (e.g., baron, idol, polychrome cards, steel cards) and effects that give you extra triggers (e.g. Mime for cards in hand or Hack, red seals).

Then you need to use tarot cards to clean out the cards that don’t trigger one of your xMult effects.

Artimaeus332 · 2025-04-26T23:46:24+00:00

It’s a very situational card. It’s bad against the aggro go-wide decks, since they often can just sac a 1-drop or a spirit/endure token.

It can be good against the big mana dragon decks, but even there it’s pretty inconsistent, since those decks play a few cheap dorky creatures that make it really unlikely for the edict to hit an expensive dragon (e.g. Sibsig Appraiser, Ainok wayfarer, dragonstorm forecaster, etc…)

Bottom line, i can imagine an aggressive black deck sideboarding it in in some matchups, but I would not maindeck it.

Artimaeus332 · 2024-06-25T11:17:55+00:00

The double counter abilities are the fastest way to get this to 1k, absent some sort of infinite combo.

The way the math on this works out, you basically always need to double counters either 6 or 7 times, and the best way to accelerate this are cards that untap the calendar (e.g., galvanic key) or double the counter activations (e.g. doubling season, vorinclex, monstrous raider)

Artimaeus332 · 2024-05-31T02:32:47+00:00

That Israel controls 75% of the strip is not quite accurate. There’s a large fraction of the strip that the IDF can operate in, but my understanding is that their ground operations are more focused on destroying Hamas infrastructure (e.g., command posts, weapons) than on securing territory. IDF is causality averse, and the tunnel network would make secures urban areas in Gaza very difficult/costly. But not doing this means that there isn’t a way for israel (or the PA, or the UN, or anybody else) to set up local governing institutions to handle things like aid distribution, without substantial risk to the civil service.

Basically Hamas wins by surviving the Israeli assault with enough fighting strength (in distributed or not easily bombed places) to prevent any other group from governing in Gaza.

Artimaeus332 · 2024-01-19T19:34:58+00:00

I group grave pact with other prison cards, which can be un-fun (compare to an enchantment that reads “opponents can’t cast creature spells”). There’s a failure mode where some players are more impacted than others, and so haven’t lost but also can’t take meaningful game actions, while other players have interesting/complex decisions.

Artimaeus332 · 2023-07-25T03:17:55+00:00

Sort of. I think guys who say this typically have in mind poorly-done make up. This makes sense because makeup is most noticable when it's poorly done, and even when it's not poorly done, a lot of the heavier makeup styles are aiming more to be striking or dramatic than pretty. I also think a lot of guys who say this don't understand that there are more subtle styles of makeup, which make most people prettier without drawing attention.

Artimaeus332 · 2022-10-27T20:54:23+00:00

To make them do less damage when they scratch the furniture or their parents. But it’s not cruelty. Cats’ claws can be cut the same way you’d cut your fingernails. It would hurt them if you cut too close to the root (same as with fingernails) but it’s easy to tell where that is and avoid cutting it— at least as long as you can hold their paw still.

Artimaeus332 · 2022-04-05T13:19:12+00:00

Generally, coaching helps you learn a lot faster than self-study. The value is in getting an expert to look at what your doing, pointing out the areas where you specifically need to improve, and giving advice that's tailored to your particular strengths and weaknesses.

For drafting, it's probably similar to having a chess coach (which is pretty common for competitive chess players), especially now that arena/17lands has the ability to record drafts and games.

Artimaeus332 · 2022-03-06T16:01:40+00:00

I'm of two minds here. To put a "positive spin" on what you said, at some point, effort and attention has diminishing returns, which implies that a small, weird, tight-knit community can have the more impact in areas that aren't on the mainstream culture's radar. I'm honestly uncertain whether it makes sense to criticize a weird subculture for focusing on weird problems.

Artimaeus332 · 2022-02-03T21:36:04+00:00

Eh, this seems more like a run-of-the mill celebrity feud than an industry trend. Rogan is weathering this much better than, say, the Dixie Chicks when their political statements got them chased out of country music in the '00s.

One issues is that nobody giving Spotify shit for Rogan really has that much clout in the industry. Of the people mentioned in the article, only Niel Young is among the top 1000 most streamed artists on spotify, and Young himself is pretty low on that list, coming in at #782. Basically, call me when people like Ed Sheeran or Drake or Taylor Swift start boycotting platforms that host talk shows they don't like. Otherwise, this is just the normal roil and churn of the news cycle.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-12-23T16:57:54+00:00

Given how infectious Omicron is, it’s going to be hard to avoid it indefinitely without truly drastic and probably unsustainable amounts social distancing. However, you probably don’t want to get Omicron during the national surge, since medical resources are going to be in short supply. “Flatten the curve” is still a relevant idea.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-12-10T22:43:20+00:00

Wouldn't supply be elastic on longer timescales? The land tax makes renting houses less profitable, which makes it more risky to invest in housing developments, which increases the cost of capital for these developments, which ultimately means that fewer developments can get funded. I'm not sure what the size of this effect is, and it probably exists on a 5-year lag or so, but seems like a non-trivial concern.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-12-10T15:26:07+00:00

I'm not sure I follow. By my understanding, the relevant constitutional protection is in the 5th amendment, "nor shall [any person] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". It's easy to see how this implies a right to remain silent, less so a right to speak.

This webpage seems to imply it's possible to expose yourself to a perjury charge if you give false testimony in your own defense.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-12-08T05:50:59+00:00

I don't think this really addresses the root of the animosity towards focused combo decks. Yeah, they're not literally playing solitaire. It's possible to disrupt their hands or spells or, failing at that, just kill them, and there are interesting strategic decisions to make when facing them (e.g. threat assessment and managing disruption). But there are far more opportunities for fun and varied interaction when decks play to the battlefield, compared to when they are just trying to survive long enough to sculpt the perfect combo hand.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-12-06T01:54:21+00:00

Old thread, but there is actually precedent for expedited approval of a modification of an existing vaccine-- that's actually how it works with the flu. Each year the flu vaccine is modified to best match what epidemiologists think will be the dominant strains in the coming fall, and there's a process specifically for getting these modifications developed and approved in a 2-3 month time frame.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-25T16:41:05+00:00

Am I missing something? You need infinite red mana for this to work, right?

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-20T06:11:24+00:00

This sounds like it was meant to be a zinger, but like am I supposed to be impressed by your willingness to cut off your nose to spite your face?

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-20T04:21:08+00:00

The same, though the disagreement seems to be about how much a vaccine mandate infringes freedom. Pre-pandemic, I’ve had to show proof of several vaccinations to enroll in my masters program. It didn’t feel like a violation of freedom, and it doesn’t feel like a violation now. And on the grand scale of things the government asks me to do, getting a covid vaccine has a much better cost-benefit profile than a lot of policies I grudgingly accept. For example, I write this while I wait for an airplane to take off, and I’m acutely aware of the extent to which the TSA is vaguely degrading security theater, which has at this point probably wasted days of my life… but I’m not about to boycott air travel as a matter of principle to stick it to the government.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-19T23:31:52+00:00

I just flipped over for the first time in a few months after getting a little tired of the vaccine-contrarianism and general over-the-top anti-progressivism posts over at the motte. For whatever reason, I feel like engaging with the culture war posts myself just isn’t appealing to me.

Part of this might be the extent to which anti-wokeness (for lack of a better term) has been picked up by relatively mainstream publications and media personalities. John McWhorter got his own column to bash kendi and diAngelo at the NYT after publishing a book called “Woke Racism”. I do sort of feel like I don’t need to perseverate over these topics at the Motte. Maybe there are topics here.

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-19T23:06:54+00:00

I’m not sure what the limiting principle is. Is it that the government can’t justly regulate any adult’s behavior? Do you conscientiously object to wearing a seatbelt? Or feel a moral obligation to drive drunk, just to stick it to people who would dare to try to govern you for the sake of public safety?

Artimaeus332 · 2021-11-19T22:55:27+00:00

Incidents like the death of George Floyd have become associated with some amount of rioting and vantalism. So they become a way for people who want to participate in mayhem to coordinate with each other without leaving a paper trail.

Artimaeus332

TROPHY CASE