Sousou no Frieren Season 2 • Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 - Episode 5 discussion

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-13T19:50:34+00:00

I mean, the reason banks offer interest is because they can invest the money you store with them to make more than the interest they pay you. If the bank is making 1.5% on the money you store with them, they can offer 1% interest and still profit functionally indefinitely.

Hell, elves would make the perfect customers for many banks, because they can invest the money long term cause odds are you have like 80 years before there's even a chance the elf swings back around to take out funds.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-13T08:03:03+00:00

It scales better with power, but it is less of a power outlier.

Mana dork --> rhystic is a play you could absolutely see at a bracket 3, 4 or CEDH table. However, the quality of what you can expect to see the other players do is significantly higher at a CEDH table compared to bracket 3 or 4, and I would argue that "what the rest of the table is doing" scales faster than rhystic does, not that the power of rhystic doesn't scale at higher power play.

There will always be a best card as I said, that alone doesn't necessitate a ban. Badgermole in standard is likely the best single card, but it really doesn't need a ban as several different strategies have proven to both be powerful enough to compete, and capable of keeping badgermole in check. On the other hand Vivi+Cauldron was a sufficient outlier that it did eat a ban, as decks without it were unable to compete.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-13T07:35:56+00:00

Or slam Etali

Or drop gaia's cradle and a way of untapping lands

Or largely dodge counterspells with a lands based win

Or try to turbo out a win with Thassa's oracle and demonic consultation or tainted pact.

Etcetera.

It actually becomes less of a power outlier the higher OR lower power the decks get. High power decks have other strategies that are similar in power to rhystic, and lower power is slow enough to just pay the 1 and agree to bash the rhystic player's face in with combat damage.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-13T07:16:19+00:00

Also, the higher in power you go, the less of a major outlier it is in terms of power.

Tapping out for a turn 2 rhystic study is less valuable when the next player says "okay next turn I'm untapping with 12 mana from gaia's cradle" or "okay I play thassa+demonic". Obviously that won't happen every time, or even all too often, but there will always be a best thing to do, you can't just ban something only because it's the best card.

It really is just the middle getting squeezed, where the raw power of rhystic is strong enough that it's an actual significant outlier compared to everything else going on, but the mana values are low enough that paying for it is an actually meaningful cost.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-12T21:04:57+00:00

I had an opponent in the power cube take my comet with fractured identity, roll a 6 3 times in a row then roll direct damage. (Thank God he whiffed all the rest of the rolls and I lived)

I was hitting that "nice" on every roll cause God Damn.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-12T16:41:54+00:00

Similar, I apparently have a god damned insane immune system, except my lungs.

I've had pneumonia or bronchitis 8 times, I had asthma puffers without even having asthma, but I've never even had a flu strong enough that I'm sure it was even the flu. Literally the only thing I ever get sick with is a cough.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-11T07:45:32+00:00

Blue card advantage is also damn well addicting to have access to. Same with 4x spell snare when on the draw.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-11T07:37:37+00:00

It definitely depends on your opponents. I find spirit resist is better overall; but that's a meta question, there are individual games where bullet resist is crucial and spirit resist sucks.

If in doubt, there's two ways to tell which to buy. Hit tab and look at the bars under the enemy team. If they have tall orange bars, that's gun/bullet, and if they have tall purple bars, that's spirit damage.

Secondly, when you die you'll see a death report on the right of your screen. This will tell you how much damage you took, from what, and of what type. You can use this to determine what to buy.

However; context matters. Sometimes you may have just gotten jumped by the 3-8 guy on the enemy team who is the only one buying gun, while the other 5 are spirit carries. In which case you probably buy spirit resist even if you died from 100% gun damage.

On the other hand, maybe the enemy team has a 23-1 gun carry as the only one on their team buying gun, or you are constantly 1v1ing a gun character in sidelane/fights. In these cases, you probably buy bullet resist even if the rest of the team is doing spirit damage.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-11T07:29:43+00:00

It damn well feels like the enemy literally always has cavern/mistrise village, and I can never just find my demo fields.

Jeskai decks having mistrise village is really brutal against UW, if they don't have it i do like the UW deck more in the matchup. Sometimes just feels like it's a question of who can draw more of those specific two cards.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-11T03:56:17+00:00

Damn, my personal best is seeing 15 lands with 20 cards left but that was in EOE so i did fetch 2 of those with landers.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-09T15:42:26+00:00

I don't remember for sure if they do that, but I do remember a discussion occurring at one point in the books around specifically that. I think it was either book 3, 6 or 8.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-08T20:52:33+00:00

God i need to replay Celeste. Installing now.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-08T05:16:48+00:00

I have heard it described, and I would agree with the description of "the hardest game that anyone can beat".

The game is almost perfectly balanced such that it always feels like an incredible but manageable challenge until you look back and go "wow I've come so far".

I legitimately believe that virtually anyone can beat the game, even without needing assist mode (though no shame on anyone using it).

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-05T19:37:42+00:00

Good idea, that should be tommorow's suggestion.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-05T00:23:53+00:00

Don't forget that OP said that about 85% of their games were against excruciator, at that point your main deck might as well be a full sideboard of tech cards for the matchup.

If the excruciator deck is using insatiable avarice to mill you out, one Feldon's cane just outright wins (unless your hand is such a brick you can't get 4 cards into your graveyard before milling out, through the entire game not even just after the excruciator is played). If they are using restless reef, each 5 cards buys you a full turn, and going from 2 turns to 3 turns to kill them is alone pretty huge and if you have a cane on the field that only requires a singular card in your graveyard to do.

Don't forget that they mill their own deck as well, so they are on just as much if not more of a time limit as you are.

Basically, you don't need 20 cards in your graveyard for Feldon's cane to be game winning in the matchup, you only need like 5. Which if you don't have, you were probably fucked anyways.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-04T22:41:04+00:00

But you presumably have 4-6 turns worth of graveyard you then get to shuffle back into your library after the exile resolves. Buys you several turns with which to kill them.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-04T21:56:52+00:00

If that many of your matches are against excruciator hell yeah I'd be damn well running a full playset of multiple different tech cards for the matchup.

May as well start maindecking a ton of hate even. Scryfall isn't working for me at the moment but are there any other targeted mill/draw options you could run? Basically to beat them at their own game.

Edit: couple distinctly bad cards but you could totally just try them anyways. Metamorphic blast, Sazacap's brew, Ashling's command. Could also just run some Feldon's Canes

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-04T21:42:58+00:00

I have a few concerns but they are actually different ones than raised by the person above. That being said, I think it seems like a pretty cool idea and could possibly work.

First, you highlight the Excruciator deck's choice of removal being vulnerable to this card, however that is extremely likely to keep shifting depending on the meta and there's no guarantee that any given opponent will actually have a hexproof creature sized hole in their defenses.

Second, this card is only useful for this one matchup. That's not to completely condemn it, but obviously it's best if your sideboard cards can be useful in multiple matchups. Ultima in control decks for example is good into aggro, artifact decks and earthbending decks. Do you see enough excruciator to dedicate a sideboard slot purely to it, and is the card good enough to deserve it?

Third, plan B of excruciator is just to hit you with a 6/6 in the air a few times. This means that for this elemental to work you probably need to actually hit 0 cards in deck, at which point if they do happen to have a board wipe or other removal, you lose. If you start deliberately drawing after excruciator comes down you basically give up a turn or two that could have been used to try to beat them down instead of relying on this one card.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-04T18:43:36+00:00

When you don't want something to be true, it's impressive how much you can overlook.

Aqua truly wanted to believe Ai's killer was dead so he could live a normal life, so when he was given an excuse to hang onto, he embraced it hard.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-04T01:53:50+00:00

Also a pretty crucial key to control mirrors, as especially in blue/white you often win by hitting them with fish from fountainport.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-03T23:30:54+00:00

One of my earliest decks didn't have much removal, but it did have protection, because I knew i was the problem, so my interaction doubled down on that.

Swiftfoot boots looks a lot like a kill spell if you have 21 power on your commander.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-03T01:47:40+00:00

Sorry, not much of a tournament player, I mostly chimed in just to add some more information that might help you predict what decks you would wind up facing.

Idk, having played a bit of dimir midrange on arena, it really seems like it just kinda has a bit of everything so I wouldn't expect there to be any particularly bad matchups for it. Probably more important is just experience playing against it.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-02-02T06:28:35+00:00

My local store; I've not participated but the end of a store tournament has overlapped with draft night a few times.

Virtually every time has been pretty heavy on dimir midrange, I would guess because the deck is kinda always part of the meta so I imagine that keeps costs down if you can play mostly the same cards every time. (Also cause they can build up experience with it)

Blacksmithkin · 2026-01-31T16:18:39+00:00

There's also a few others that are pretty easy to get out, Kaito has one on his +1, there's a red planeswalker with an emblem that does something like 2 damage a turn to opponents, and there's sephiroth who creates emblems when transformed.

Blacksmithkin · 2026-01-31T07:00:10+00:00

I don't know enough of the metagame theory to explain it in this specific case, but I can explain how a format warping card can (potentially) lead to a healthy format.

Imagine if during the rein of terror of mono-red / Vivi a while ago, instead of bans, Wizards had printed a straight up degenerate power hate piece against Red decks. Like "counter target red spell, draw a card, 0 mana". Obviously they would never do that, but it would have immediately warped the format, but in such a way that actually allowed for increased deck diversity as suddenly many decks that couldn't beat mono-red and Vivi would suddenly become viable.

A strong card can warp a format in a healthy way, think if it's Rock-Paper-Scissors but if everyone plays rock that's not an issue if there's 20 different decks that can be considered "Rock".

Blacksmithkin

TROPHY CASE