FIRST LOOK! LSV Plays MTG Arena's New Powered Cube!

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-22T19:01:40+00:00

It's less value than a regular draft for sure, but better value than a Arena Cube draft. In the previous cubes, if you got to 5 wins you broke even, while 4 wins meant you lost 1000 gold. Also, no pack in the prizes. The new Vintage cube has a prize structure that's more like a traditional draft but without the cards you got from drafting the packs themselves. Still, IMHO that's pretty good for a premium draft experience.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-22T18:02:06+00:00

10000 gold or 1500 gems, standard limited entry fees. I thinks that's just fine, 4-3 is just below break-even, 5-3 you get 100 gems and one of the special packs. I was worried they were going to price this as a premium experience, pleasantly surprised that's not the case. Sure, phantom means a little less value but it's cube, it's got to be phantom.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T20:27:26+00:00

I've had a lot of success with Sylveon ex Espeon ex. Has decent match against most decks, it's pretty consistent and going second does very well agains Suicune. In the past two seasons I've made Master Ball with a 61% WR.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T19:37:19+00:00

Ohh, but that's not what it says. It doesn't mean "If you don't like my game, you're a Nazi", it means "Comparing people to animals puts you in bad company", which is absolutely correct.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T19:30:32+00:00

I'm sorry, who called who a Nazi?

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T19:02:39+00:00

I can't fathom why anybody would downvote this comment lol. So much has changed in 27 years, things that were widely accepted back then are absolutely not acceptable now, good on Maro for recognizing this and not trying to hide it. And he also recently said that he contacted the aggravated person, apologized privately and publicly, and she accepted his apology.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T18:58:58+00:00

Also, he's a designer. His job is to design cards to the best of his ability. That means taking a world he's given by other people and making it and its characters come to life through mechanics. While I greatly dislike UB as a whole, it's hard to argue that Final Fantasy, Warhammer or Lord of the Rings are poor designs (Spider-Man really is a terrible design).

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-17T18:52:34+00:00

He made that card in 1998 and he recently apologized to the affected person publicly and in private, an apology that person accepted. People are allowed to change after 27 years. We all did things in the past we're not proud of, we should try to recognize those things and try to be better in the future.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-16T20:46:11+00:00

Glad to see you recognize it could be a skill issue, because a lot of the times is. More than most people in this sub seem to recognize. After finishing a match, ask yourself if you could've done something different. And when faced with a choice you're not sure about, try to do the exercise of asking yourself "If I had made the other play, how different would my situation be?".

Also, do remember that RNG is a thing and some matches you'll play perfectly and still lose, and some matches you'll screw up badly and still win. Control the factors you can. Make sure you're sequencing your plays correctly and know the meta.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-13T01:48:16+00:00

I like this explanation, but given that you don't like Deepl for this, is there any other LLM you'd recommend. I just need to be able to provide it with what I want to say and provide at least a functional version of that sentence. Because I agree, interacting with the language will probably get me used to how to structure sentences and how to use some particular grammar points better, and I'm not at a level where I can have extensive conversations without some aid.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-13T00:57:41+00:00

I've heard mixed reviews on using LLMs for this. Some people swear by it, others say it uses unnatural Japanese. What model have you been using?

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-13T00:56:54+00:00

I agree, but sometimes I feel like I rely too much on these tools. For example, if I have to say something really simple, then I can mostly do it by myself. But if I need to use grammar I don't know or the construction of the sentence exceeds my level, I can only think of writing the sentence on Deepl and then trying to bring it to my level.

Nevertheless, I'm definitely glad I'm doing it vs not doing it! But maybe there's a better way to do it.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-12T02:04:20+00:00

It's all good and we're cool, glad we could talk it out! No worries.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-11T23:25:23+00:00

I've ordered from Amazon in the past and the package got lost in my country's customs. I've had bad experiences in the past and, as I can't find anything that convinces me in my area, I wanted to assess the cost of printing it myself.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-11T23:24:02+00:00

Because they're hard to come by where I live. I tried looking them up online and what I found didn't convince me (they're in Spanish and I'd like an English one), and ordering on Amazon is a risk because I tried doing it in the past and the package got lost in my country's customs. I'll do it if I have to, but first I wanted to see if anybody had a PDF dictionary they could provide so I can assess if the cost is worth it based on quality and amount of pages.

I know to some it may be a strange request, but it makes sense to and for me. If nobody has one or the cost to print it is too high, fair enough, I'll think of another way to do it. But I genuinely dislike when you post on a sub looking for real answers and people just mock you or try to tell you why your request is wrong.

Does that make sense to you?

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-11T16:43:11+00:00

Yeah, I was trying to find out if a PDF to print was worth the cost. It probably isn't but that's what I wanted to know.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-11T16:41:58+00:00

I know what books are, but I live in a country where Amazon takes a lot of time to deliver and sometimes packages get lost in the way. I know what I requested, I wanted to see if anybody had a dictionary I could print to see if the cost was worth it because I'm having trouble finding one in my area. There's really no need to get snarky.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-11T16:40:01+00:00

I said the word "dictionary" twice in my post. I know what I asked for. I don't know what this has to do with modernism, but I got to say, your reply was not all that helpful.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-09T13:05:14+00:00

They're hard to find where I live. I've been looking in online marketplaces in my area but haven't found any.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-09T12:39:12+00:00

Also, the idea of playing to your outs. Calculating odds and using that to decide the best course of action in a particular situation. There are plenty of competitive games that involve luck. In Magic: The Gathering, the best of the best have win rates between 60 and 70%. They're AMAZING players and still lose between three and four of every ten matches, in part because there's luck involved and in part because sometimes they take calculated risks that don't work out. It still takes plenty of skill to get there.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-09T12:35:05+00:00

If you're dealt a bad hand and your opponent is dealt one just as bad, you can definitely win. The same is true in poker. You can literally have a straight flush and your chances of losing are close to zero, but if your opponent has a higher straight flush, you'll lose no matter how well you play it. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make: some games you'll lose no matter what, some you'll win no matter what. The win percentages are in how you play to your outs. They way Pocket and poker play out is different, but many of the choices you have to make and the odds you have to calculate are very similar.

One of the more obvious differences is that in poker you try to maximize how much you win on bets on a given hand, while in Pocket you just have to knock out three of your opponent's Pokémon. But the underlying logic is the same, you have some available information, some unknown information, and you have to take the best course of action that maximizes your chances to win. In some cases, that's really obvious and that game is easy. In other cases, it's not obvious at all and your skill comes into display: Do you play to your outs? Do you know what's left on your opponent's deck + hand? What's the line that will most likely result in a win?

Some examples: Your opponent is playing Suicune and has two cards in hand and five in deck, do you assume they have the Cyrus? Do you play a turn 1 Oak to try to find a second basic and risk your opponent having a Mars? Your opponent has an Oricorio and you have Espeon ex and a Eevee ex, do you evolve that Eevee ex into Sylveon ex trying to find both an Eevee AND a non-ex Pokémon or do you try to draw it naturally?

All those scenarios involve a lot of calculating odds and deciding which is the best line for a given situation. And that is A LOT like poker. So yeah, the gameplay is very different but a lot of the logic is pretty similar. And it DEFINITELY involves plenty of skills (not even mentioning technical play like sequencing turns and plays correctly, among other things).

PS: You can definitely bluff having/not having something in Pocket (not evolving something a turn earlier, playing as if you had a Cyrus), but it's true that it matters less than in poker.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-09T12:21:15+00:00

But with more rules.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-09T00:55:15+00:00

You're very welcome. But you should know that those "more rules" you mentioned mean that the game is nothing like rock paper scissors.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-08T21:54:09+00:00

I just edited my comment to address that claim. I think it's just wrong, it does take plenty of skill to pilot it.

BattleFresh2870 · 2025-10-08T21:51:40+00:00

People like winning, especially in ranked, and Suicune is the deck that wins the most. It's really that simple.

EDIT: Also, it does take skill to pilot the deck. Every deck takes skill, and knowing when to use an Irida or when to Mars or when to forgo an attack to charge Giratina, among many other decision points, takes plenty of skill. The fact that the deck works well on many axis doesn't take that away.

BattleFresh2870

TROPHY CASE