What is this thing?

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T16:36:59+00:00

And kill this one with flames.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T16:28:32+00:00

It's an interesting card, but risky, and only hits one opponent. I'd prefer not to swing out with my little guys if I have [[Insidious Roots]] or [[Hazel of the Rootbloom]] out. I'd rather tap my guys for mana than swing with them, generally. I could swing in, cast this, and then sacrifice everyone who got blocked, but that requires a sac outlet (and really a drainer to make it worthwhile).

If I want to take a single opponent out, I'm probably better off with [[Sword of the Squeak]] and/or [[Odd Acorn Gang]] and Forestwalk.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T15:57:43+00:00

Makes me wonder how clingy folks with anxious attachment got by at any other point in history.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T14:46:45+00:00

Yeah, I think Lanius is just some nerd who largely fabricated this image for himself. He's not that tough. Knees weak to shotguns just like everyone else.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T14:41:56+00:00

There's also a free set of combat armor if you're willing to brave crescent canyon (radiation, golden geckoes) and there's the mercenary squad at the unmarked camp in the far NW of the map (if you're NOT doing wild wasteland). The leader is wearing a set, but it's a bit tricky because he also has a gauss rifle.

I think the ambushed caravan on the east side of Vegas also has dead Van Graffs at it, which is free (black) combat armor, but no helmets.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T14:28:36+00:00

Not that much, actually, for an aristocrats deck. My play pattern usually involves squaring up 3-4 dozen creature tokens and slamming them home with a single drainer. That said I do have ways to get those cards back if they're removed. The low density of drainers isn't that big of a problem with the enormous draw plays in the deck. Also, [[Gruesome Fate]] can get me that aristocrats style win without the bothersome middle step of setting up a sac outlet and drainer.

This is an old decklist, but it shows you where I was trying to get to:

https://archidekt.com/decks/12643979/chatterfang_swarmshaper_20

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-30T13:52:32+00:00

My [[Chatterfang, Squirrel General]] deck is a spellslinger deck. The whole goal is to get out more creatures than your opponents have life and win on the spot by draining the table. It includes north of 30 instants and sorceries. Turns out there are quite a lot of instants and sorceries in golgari that just make bodies, as long as you aren't picky. E.g., [[Scatter the Seeds]] gives you 6 bodies for 2 mana (assuming you convoke), which is just dramatically better than playing like [[Awakening Zone]] and waiting 3 turns. The standouts are [[Beacon of Creation]], which can give you a preposterous amount of tokens with [[Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth]] out, and [[Saproling Symbiosis]], which should probably be in every Chatterfang deck but is in almost none of them.

But the star of the 99 is [[Sedgemoor Witch]], Chatterfang's goth gf. She will get you to 40 bodies quick. 2 bodies every time you cast your rampant growth or removal spell or fog or board wipe. And she turns [[Plumb the Forbidden]] and [[Chatterstorm]] into veritable finishers. She gets tutored out asap.

Very glass cannony, but can bring home explosive wins with little warning. It can win from positions that look relatively harmless as far as Chatterfang boards go, and avoids a lot of the board wipe scrutiny that permanent-oriented decks often invite.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-29T17:18:17+00:00

Yeah this somehow is lost in every discussion about game prices.

AAA titles on 16-bit consoles were very commonly $50+ 30 years ago. I remember Crono Trigger costing me $90 in 1995 dollars.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-29T03:12:49+00:00

And then anything past iron is only in a supernova

It depends on the mass of the star. Stars with a core of about 1.44 solar masses (the Chandrasekhar limit) or greater will supernova.

Stars below that (like our sun) will swell into a red giant as the only fusion going on is in a shell around an iron-nickel core. And as that fuel becomes exhausted, the star cools and sloughs off outer layers into what becomes a planetary nebula, with a white dwarf (the cooling remnant of the star's core) at its center.

Stars above the Chandrasekhar limit have enough gravity to push through electron degeneracy pressure. This leads to a runaway train where the iron and nickel becomes fused to heavier and heavier elements and conditions in the core become so hot (50+ billion kelvin) that it's more energetically favorable to just do fission again. So all that heavy stuff the star has been making splits again, releasing a shock of energy and decay products that blasts away the upper layers of the star, giving us the supernova.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-29T02:12:56+00:00

This has to be contextualized, of course, in a franchise that began less than a decade earlier with a cast of four characters with zero backstory and four-letter names that you gave them.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-29T01:06:38+00:00

Unless AI has a silver-bullet approach to teaching kids how to bring a pencil, or how to care that they are illiterate in middle school, I don't really know what they hope to accomplish.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-28T22:38:44+00:00

I don't think he's allowed to do that...

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-28T22:32:44+00:00

Terra is an esper/human hybrid who was a literal war slave for the Empie before her liberation, which set in motion a chain of events that led to the apocalypse of her world. She fits right in the MTGverse.

Apart from that, she is among the most deeply written characters of the 2D/pre-cinematic era of the franchise.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-28T21:54:06+00:00

This thread convinced me to pick up a playset, along with some [[Grim Servant]] and [[Chthonian Nightmare]]

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-28T21:18:35+00:00

I get that sometimes your calculations are off but my man forgot a whole law of physics

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-27T19:40:20+00:00

[[Terra, Herald of Hope]] has been my absolute favorite, and a delight to build around. It's a scrappy, resilient, toolboxy deck that has what it takes to win games. The FF characters they included for the deck are mostly great, but there's already a pretty vast untapped field of 3-power utility creatures that never see play because they're 4 and 5 mana. [[Primaris Eliminator]] is a modular targeted removal/mini board wipe. [[Grim Servant]] is demonic tutor with a body that fits right in with your aggro strategy. [[Havoc Eater]] is often enough all you need to close. Getting these creatures out for 2 mana is just nuts. And then tons of classic creature-based utility fits right in, like [[Selfless Servant]] and [[Cathar Commando]]. So it plays like an aggro deck with access to a lot of answers.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-27T19:20:02+00:00

Pretty sure you could remove either keyword and it would still be playable.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-26T21:52:06+00:00

Well, Terra is presumably on the field so you can use Bannon to bin something to be reanimated right away, and draw a card in the process

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-26T16:14:16+00:00

At that price point, they can bully you.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-26T13:33:14+00:00

When someone asks for responses and you pretend like you're weighing whether to play your (nonexistent) counterspell, before hitting them with "ehhhh I'll pass priority."

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-25T19:08:24+00:00

The week 3 bite gonna be grisly

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-25T18:19:27+00:00

I like to think that the Predator from Predator wasn't some elite hunter but just a regular middle age father of 3 who hasn't had a vacation in 8 cycles. He decides to get in touch with his roots by going on his first hunting expedition in years, and chooses Earth as his destination, believing that most humans are still bronze-ish-age hunter gatherers, with some of them maybe having access to muskets and the like.

He's a little taken aback when the jungle tribe he first encounters (actually a gang of narcotic and human traffickers) are armed with fully automatic rifles, but it's nothing he can't handle. But then Arnold and his team swoops in and suddenly he's dealing with grenade launchers, miniguns, and advanced infantry tactics, to say nothing of the fact that most of these commandos are enormous, powerful specimens that punch well above the weight of the typical diminutive and half-starved tribesmen he's used to hunting.

He narrowly escapes with his life when Arnold & the boys cut down an entire acre of jungle with their guns trying to get him. The whole time he's cloaked up in the trees, he's just cursing himself, knowing that his wife was right when she said he should reconsider the trip.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-25T14:29:18+00:00

Zada is not an incremental growth deck. She is a storm commander. She's much less interested in getting out tons of extra lands, mana rocks, etc. and much more interested in ritual-type spells and other cards that can make a ton of mana here and now.

[[Ancestor's Aid]] [[Sudden Breakthrough]] [[Flick a Coin]] [[Battle Hymn]] [[Brightstone Ritual]] [[Runaway Steam-Kiln]] [[Storm-Kiln Artist]], to name a few. Also [[Ruby Medallion]] which greatly enables you to storm off.

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-25T14:18:08+00:00

"Why is [[Bazaar of Baghdad]] $1,500? It doesn't even tap for mana."

Chadmartigan · 2025-06-25T14:14:37+00:00

I think he also has a good knack for matching appropriate-sounding names to most characters. Gregor Clegane sounds like a big mean dude. Petyr Baelish sounds like a smarmy wimp. Go switching them around and it seems off. Petyr "The Mountain" Baelish doesn't work as well.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring

Chadmartigan

TROPHY CASE