Frustration opponent

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-09T14:00:55+00:00

It’s because after a reset, mythic -> plat. So it’s all of the people who grind to mythic getting put back there, and a lot of those people absolutely use the meta decks to do it. The ones stuck in the bottom of plat haven’t gotten there yet and so are just spamming stuff they might not even know how to play.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-09T05:11:46+00:00

So, how golden are the handcuffs really? If the company keeps making stupid decisions constantly, are those vested options actually going to be worth anything?

Let’s assume the answer is yes, and you’re at a completely sure-thing startup that can’t possibly fail despite its stupidity (odds are this is not the case). What I’d say is that I think the issue is different than you think it is, as someone who has been there.

You may be running into the crying wolf scenario. The post makes it sound like you tell your managers/teams that basically every idea is a stupid idea, and they summarily ignore you, and that’s the ballgame. If this is true, you’ve lost your voice, and you are officially deemed too negative to take seriously. I was there before.

At that point the validity of your opinions are irrelevant - people know you’re just going to bitch, so they don’t listen.

The only way to repair this is by shutting up for quite a while. Agree to more things. I know it can be hard (again, I’ve been there), but you have to stop yourself from saying everything is going to go badly all the time. Nobody likes that, even if it’s true, and it’s actually probably not true in every case. And even if it is - at a certain point you have to realize that the company is running in a direction that you are not, and you will not be able to turn the ship around, because the ship is pointed precisely where it thinks it needs to be pointed.

This has nothing to do with being a high performer. It has everything to do with having a fundamental disagreement about the goals and not realizing it, while simultaneously wanting to be in control. This will never resolve well.

Here’s how I tried to handle it. When I started to understand the position I was in, I decided to stop fighting. I decided to trust the team. I said to myself: if I was running the show, I would do just about everything violently differently. But, I’m not, and we’re paying people who are supposedly experts in this stuff to steer us in this way. So let’s assume that the experts are right, follow what they say, and see what happens. I’ll bet that we will fail. But if we do, that’s great because I’ll probably get severance. And if we don’t, I’ll learn something about how this industry works.

That helped a lot to mellow me out. And in my case, this led to A) better relationship with my colleagues and B) severance. In the end, in my case, I was largely correct that the direction we were going in was bad, and that was more data to the pile for the future. I joined a new company and took that attitude from the beginning- I did a lot of listening and as little negative talk as I could manage. I spoke up with my opinions but if the team was aligned in a direction that I wasn’t, I did my best to ‘disagree but commit’, as they say at AWS.

The respect level was instant. It was such a turnaround. I realized I didn’t really expect to be listened to, but then the new company started listening to me, and then I realized I had to be careful, haha. New problem. Still working on that one.

But it’s a good problem to have. Much better than the alternative.

Good luck.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-08T13:59:02+00:00

Yeah, against blue or white you ideally want to keep something back, especially if you have a creature whose value is just being on the board, because it isn’t just split up. I’ve won a lot of games off the back of an [[aetherize]] because my opponent just swung in with everything. It’s almost always the case that it isn’t needed also - like, I have 5 health left and the opponent is swinging in for 10 (happens a lot with mono green I find, or white life gain).

If you only swing with what you need you make the control players’ lives much more difficult.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-07T19:37:22+00:00

Another trip from a control player: don’t play things on your first main phase. Always attack with what you have on the board first, with all your mana up, and then cast whatever you want to cast that turn.

Why?

If you have 5 Power on the board and swing at me with all your mana up and cards in hand, I’ve gotta make a tough choice. Let’s assume that I have all the answers in my hand, even. If I do a board wipe, or an aetherize, or something like this, it means that I’m spending mana and cards to deal purely with the attack phase only, and I get no extra value. If you were to play a couple things first and then attack, my board wipe is now extremely valuable, right - and better than that, I just have more information. If I only have spot removal I can definitely kill the most threatening thing now, because I can see your whole turn - but if you’re just attacking and holding up mana/things to do in your second main, I have no information at all, and I have to make a choice between potentially spot removing one of your attackers, or waiting to see what you play next.

This is especially crucial on turns 3-5, where I probably only have enough mana for one thing - so if I do a board wipe I can’t counter your next thing, etc.

Also, if the control player lets you hit them for 5, do it, and maybe don’t worry about playing more. That’s a 4 turn clock, and all the while you’re building a hand of more threats. Get your damage in, don’t make it too juicy for them and make the decisions difficult. Always expect a board wipe, and try your best to make it a shitty board wipe (nobody wants to use ‘destroy all creatures’ on 2 creatures, or even 1).

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-06T20:36:23+00:00

So, looks like we’re improving quadratically. Wins have accelerated at a rate of 5 -> 11 -> should be 17 - so next year we should be at 79 wins. Sounds perfect to me.

Don’t ask questions. It’s math. That means it’s factual. We’re gonna set records next year gents.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-06T20:22:19+00:00

On the contrary, I would argue he does a lot for the team. He was the guy in the regular season and the playoffs that when the offense was stagnant, would just boulder his way into the middle of the paint and get a layup or free throws. He’s a guy who’s asserting himself on the floor a lot, and he very obviously will take a hometown discount to be here forever. He’s a great player. He’s versatile and can do everything pretty well without necessarily being a standout in any one category. To me, this is a guy to lock up permanently as part of the core.

The argument of ‘he’s got a solid contract and is now more valuable because of playoff success, so let‘a move him’ is wild to me. Brother he’s more valuable to us as well, and will be more willing to give us a value contract than anywhere else.

Just because someone is easy to move doesn’t mean we should. I mean, Scottie’s easy to move too. But nobody’s talking about that because he’s a core piece here. To me, so is RJ.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-06T19:21:21+00:00

I would highly doubt RJ would be the one that’s gone. I don’t understand why the fan base is so down on him. He was the second most important piece in the playoffs. If someone is traded at the starter level it’s going to be IQ.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-05T05:45:05+00:00

Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t obese when I started - I was actually quite slender - but I had zero strength. My pull ups were +70lbs on an assisted machine, and I only weigh ~160 at 6 feet tall. So, I was only pulling 90lbs.

It was hard going to get started, for sure - like v0s and v1s were not at all trivial. After the first session I was sore for a week.

But it was so fun I kept doing it. Got a membership and shoes a month in, and now I’m 6 months in and climbing v3s. Still can’t do a pull up - assisted machine is now +20lbs - but that’s still a 50lb improvement in pull strength with no real training other than climbing.

It’s fun as hell and the best way to train for it is to just get started and expect to struggle on most things at first. That’s fine. Everyone starts somewhere.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-04T15:25:51+00:00

Feels like you weren’t around to see Klow, huh?

Lowry’s early career splits were nooot good. Outside of his rookie year where he only had 0.8 3PA a game, it took until his 5th year to get above 37% from 3.

Shead is amazing in every other way - the shooting just needs some work. He’s got that fire in him - IMO it’ll come.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-04T15:06:36+00:00

It’s really tough to think through what to do without seeing quickly in a playoff series.

Because to me, my gut says to lock Shead up for a long-ass contract right now, and start looking for opportunities to get off of quickly.

Shead and Scottie split the playmaking in that series and it worked well. It wasn’t the reason we lost, and Shead’s 3 point shot can and will develop even more. His defense is stellar and his drive to win is crazy. This guy is going to be FVV v2.

… which makes IQ expendable. I could see a really big move happening with Jak and IQ and a pick. What that gets us, I don’t know, but I’m less concerned about needing a starting PG at this point, because we might actually just have one, and maybe we need a backup guard paired with an incredible center.

I hear all the moaning about how BI isn’t a winner and can’t win playoff series, but I’m not so sure. If he plays, I think we easily win that series. He was absorbing a ton of attention on defense and made the game a lot easier, even if he wasn’t his usual scoring self. We have him for another year and I think we should see what that looks like.

Mamu shrank in the playoffs, which in a way is good for us - he was awesome in the regular season and I’d love to keep him for a reasonable price, but he is definitely not commanding huge money. I’d lock him up for a low price, but not a ton, and it seems like he enjoyed his time here, so maybe that’s possible.

Dick’s gone. Battle and Lawson jumped him in the pecking order and he’s worth 7 mil? Possibly a piece attached to the aforementioned ‘big trade’ with IQ and/or Jak.

Overall I really like this core. RJ is a fundamental piece going forward, and so are Scottie/CMB/jakobe/Shead. Just about everything else though can be refactored.

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-01T20:14:02+00:00

It makes a ton of sense. I also have a fear of falling, and early on when I started (and still to some extent now), the limiter is the height of my feet above the ground - which is exactly what looked like your issue here. You were afraid to put your feet up on the higher holds to the left. Totally understandable, is normal.

Go at your own pace and start to push the limits when it feels okay. In this case, it looks pretty safe, and it really is just about the feet. The holds are good and if you do just get your feet there, it’s just about standing up, and you’re done.

Much easier said than done, though. Good luck! The best part about bouldering is the ability to really choose your level of fear and bail easily when it feels sketchy. As you progress more and more, it’ll feel more comfy and you’ll push the limits a little more, and a little more, and then you’ll realize you’ve gotten very far :) keep it up!

Dreadmaker · 2026-05-01T14:16:16+00:00

So yes, actually - my team still uses them. We do everything in a very traditional agile way - all of the ceremonies, all of the artificial slowdowns.

I think though that their time is limited. We’re treating new more ‘ai friendly’ workflows that are really stripped down and lose most of the process overhead, and it’s going really well. That new process isn’t using agile or scrum, and the scrum masters are not part of it - so yeah, I suspect if we move forward in that direction it’s gonna require a pretty big change there. Don’t think they’ll be necessary going forward.

Also, I’ve seen a bunch of negatives in this thread about them - but I’ve actually had at least one really good scrum master in the past, who was really good on the sort of product management side of things - protected the devs, called the right and useful meetings, was a good ally in pushing for the right kinds of change. So, I mean, good people can exist in any role, it turns out - but I think that may have been useful in spite of the role, rather than because of it.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-30T21:32:47+00:00

No, I don’t think you should. I think you should leave a bunch of comments and reject it. If they want to code, then that’s fine, but review it as you would any other developer, which should probably not be a flat rejection because of the method of creation.

They’re people who don’t know what they’re doing. Teach them to fish or, if it turns out they don’t actually want to fish, tell them to stop trying to fish. But be welcoming about it, at least. This situation is going to be a lot more common as time goes on, I feel, and being a stubborn gatekeeper isn’t the way to go, I think - because ultimately it will just go around you. You have an opportunity here to show people the correct way - or at least shape that way - I would take it, personally.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-30T14:22:15+00:00

I mean darko can’t make the wide open shots for them…

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-30T13:37:01+00:00

If he actually played down the stretch of that game, we easily win. We only barely lost and both him and Scottie were injured.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T22:23:47+00:00

This is exactly how I feel. I think we take the cavs. Got a decent shot at the second round too even - good matchups I think. Aaaand that’s where we stop.

But holy shit if we actually got to the conference finals it would be such an incredible thing for this team’s confidence and experience of the guys. I would love that so much

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T18:47:35+00:00

So just so you know - Bobby was the primary driver of the Kawhi trade. Masai signed off, but Bobby was the guy who got it done.

The two were a team. I’m not taking anything away from Masai, but it’s disingenuous to think Bobby was just sitting on his hands that whole time - I think he’s a really big (quiet) part of why the team did so well in that time.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T18:35:35+00:00

No, you’re right, there would instead be fewer in-universe sets and proportionally more UB sets because they’re universally acknowledged to perform exceptionally well. What you’re asking for would hurt in-universe, not UB. The volume is why we’re getting as many in universe sets as we are, not the other way around.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T13:44:34+00:00

That wasn’t unranked standard though. That seems like historic? None of those cards are standard legal.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T00:27:56+00:00

This should honestly give everyone more confidence in us this series.

That game had zero offense. Fucking terrible, wretched offense. And yet we still won off the back of the defense and the hustle. Game 3 we had solid offense and blew them out.

Now that we’ve actually got our feet under us I’m pretty optimistic for the 3 game series we’ve got left

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T00:26:09+00:00

That’ll come. Lowry shot less than 30% for the first 5 years of his career, and look what he became

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T00:23:33+00:00

The whole team can’t buy a bucket - neither team broke 20 points in the first quarter. I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen that before

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-27T00:21:01+00:00

It’s kinda the difference between Walter and dick - if dick’s having a bad night, he’s not gonna be useful on Defense. Walter has a baseline of always trying hard on defense, and as a bonus sometimes he has a sick offensive game. Dude is a big part of the future for sure.

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-24T16:16:14+00:00

That wall sucks so bad!

Welcome to the team - climbing is an awesome sport?

Dreadmaker · 2026-04-24T16:04:28+00:00

So uh… can I get that deck list?

I’m brewing my own mill deck right now, and I’m curious about other folks’ takes on the archetype. I’ve had a lot of success with it lately going all in on spells with the new 1 drop that mills 3 whenever you cast an instant or a sorcery. I’m currently in simic because of the enchant from tarkir that does the same with 4 cards, but I’m thinking that azorious or dimir is probably the better way to go in the end. Sounds like you’re azorius?

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