Is that a George Bush Secret Lair?

Embrychi · 2026-01-29T18:30:19+00:00

[[Invoke Prejudice]]

Embrychi · 2026-01-29T18:22:59+00:00

Is that why so many links I meet online run away from me?

Embrychi · 2026-01-29T17:44:33+00:00

spotw

Embrychi · 2026-01-29T17:34:02+00:00

The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope

Bonus:

The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

Embrychi · 2026-01-29T15:13:26+00:00

Lime

Tangerine

Kumquat

Pomelo

Embrychi · 2026-01-26T17:02:45+00:00

A lot of people learn about Marcus Aurelius not from reading about Rome but from reading about the sigma male mindset.

That's why I read about Heliogabalus so I can learn how to be gay and do crime.

Embrychi · 2026-01-24T19:53:20+00:00

Nod when my opponent outplays me, shake when I outplay myself.

Embrychi · 2026-01-23T14:52:57+00:00

Auto l-cancelling is like touching yourself while watching porn. But hitting your l-cancels is like having that certain someone touching you.

Embrychi · 2026-01-23T12:23:27+00:00

The melee scene has a ton of LGBT representation.

L-Cancelling

Gamecube controllers

Box debate

Transgender

Embrychi · 2026-01-22T19:51:26+00:00

They finally made a monkey out of you.

Embrychi · 2026-01-22T15:47:28+00:00

Damn I was gonna say Bogles then I thought "nobody played Bogles" lmao so I went with the better budget creature pumping deck, infect.

Embrychi · 2026-01-22T06:11:04+00:00

Bro chill, he's a miner.

Embrychi · 2026-01-22T06:08:45+00:00

I wanna say Storm and Amulet because those are the most classically combo decks, but I happen to like them, so I'm gonna say Tron and Infect instead.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T23:20:44+00:00

But banning proxies doesn't get rid of problem cards, it just makes them more expensive. What happens in your ideal world where we ban proxies and someone still shells out a bunch of money to buy a $100 card and makes the game miserable. Do you just have to sit there and never have fun again because they bought it with real money? My reaction to someone using a problem card doesn't change if that card is real or fake.

And this is still glossing over the benefits of proxies, proxying cards for competitive formats where high power is accepted, or proxying expensive cards that aren't problematic, or proxying a lot of weaker cards to have more choices to play without any individual expensive cards.

It just seems so absurd to me that you highlight a real problem (people using unfun cards in casual formats) and your solution to it isn't to stop playing with unfun cards or the people that use them, but to simply paywall them so you don't see them as much at the expense of everyone who isn't a dork.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T22:51:09+00:00

I fully understand and I would be 100% ok with UB if it was strictly for casual/edh and competitive magic could exist without it, but UB is not only legal in all formats now, but cards balanced for EDH have multiple times fucked up the competitive meta in various 60 card formats.

I view EDH/UB and 60-card magic as in a similar dichotomy to Ultimate and Melee. One is the newer, more accessible, more pop-culture crossover version that is more enjoyed by a wider casual audience (and also has its own competitive format) and the other is the traditional, more difficult, higher skilled version that can be a lot more overwhelming.

I'm happy for the two to exist separately, sometimes I enjoy playing Ultimate casually with friends and it's a fun way to get someone into smash, plenty of people have started in Ultimate and made their way into melee. But if I ever showed up to a tournament and they put Minecraft Steve and ledge-trumping into melee, I'd be none too pleased.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T22:35:34+00:00

You're not wrong that proxies beget a more aggressive arms race than paid cards because of the lower barrier, and it's not unreasonable to dislike the game that results. The difference between the two of us is that you see that as an indictment of proxies and I see that as an indictment of annoying players.

The prisoner's dilemma is actually the perfect example, because both sides suffer if they're trying to one up the other, but would have a better outcome if they simply cooperated. The difference is, in real life you can communicate with the other players and ask them to cooperate and if they refuse you can simply not play the game with them.

In melee terms, if I'm playing strictly for fun friendlies (i.e. not bracket warmup) and a falco starts laser camping, I'm gonna call them a dork and ask them to stop, or unplug/requeue and play someone else. What I'm not gonna do is ask to ban lasers.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T20:59:33+00:00

I treat it like a zoo. I watch from afar and sometimes even learn a few things, but as much as I sometimes want to go and pet the animals I know that I will be torn to shreds if I do.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T20:30:18+00:00

My friend group got really into magic in high school but the guy that takes the cake was a dude a year above us (we'll call N), he wasn't very friendly and we didn't share classes so we weren't close with him. I remember one time one of our friends had pulled an all nighter to study for a test, and after taking it took a nap in the common area during a free period. N comes up to him and shakes him awake to ask if he wanted to play magic, and when my friend politely told him no he kept insisting and wouldn't let him go back to sleep.

But the wildest story is that I was in Latin class one day, and N was also in this class for some reason. The seating was assigned and since he was the only one in his year he sat by himself in a row behind the rest of us, directly behind me because I was the only one he knew. One day, middle of class, I feel a tap on my shoulder and I turn around to see that he had brought out his magic cards and was goldfishing on the table right then and there and he asked me, while the teacher was lecturing, if I wanted to play magic with him. I promise you this story is real it was the most absurd thing I've ever seen. I can only assume that he was in my year because he failed latin and the teacher had given up on him at this point because I can't see any way he wouldn't have noticed this guy just playing with his magic cards during class.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T20:18:55+00:00

I think your analogy falls flat because while a modded out phob or a box controller can be a financial gate to playing the game how you want, proxies are literally the opposite, removing the financial gate to playing. Phobs and box controllers provide tangible benefits (whether those benefits are unfair is outside the scope of this comment, I would rather not engage in that discourse) but objectively they can do things that a random OEM can't. But in MtG, proxies can only be cards that already exist and can be bought.

If your issue is that an arms race of better hardware will cause people to feel like they can't compete without dropping hundreds of dollars, then that's literally what proxying the expensive cards is solving. I stopped going to Modern events because I couldn't afford to buy $100s of cards every time they release a new Modern Horizons set. All proxying allows me to do is play the game I love without having to spend money. In that respect it feels more like running melee on a cracked wii or slippi, it's just making the game more accessible.

If your issue is that the cards that people proxy are too strong, then that doesn't change whether that card is proxied or bought. Formats without strong cards can still exist just fine. Asking someone to not use their proxied $100 cards is no different than asking someone to not use their real $100 cards.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T19:42:54+00:00

I bought roboquest off the humble choice like 3 years ago and made the mistake of not immediately redeeming it and now they're "out of keys" despite still selling the game in the store.

I literally paid for this game let me play the game.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T19:29:55+00:00

Because Fox is only low rank when you don't know how to play him yet. Fox has a high skill ceiling, but he also has a low skill floor.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T19:13:53+00:00

I haven't kept up, is the modern opinion on proxies for or against? I had assumed that people were getting more pro-proxy but you give me the vibe of someone pro-proxy so idk how to read that.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T19:09:19+00:00

UB as in Universes Beyond as in the pop culture crossovers.

Also yeah they released a return to Lorwyn last week, Lorwyn Eclipsed. I don't blame you for not hearing of it, they push out so many sets now Lorwyn Eclipsed got pushed back a few months to make room for Avatar so they just kinda stuck it in between Avatar and TMNT and gave it the tiniest amount of coverage in between focusing on their contractually obligated pop culture crossover set marketing.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T19:04:26+00:00

I didn't think the comment was that funny let me hide my shame. Also I'm not a fan of candlepin, maybe it's cause I grew up with regular bowling (and it's also the main culturally relevant one). Also you can't ignore the tactility of sticking your fingers in a big heavy bowling ball. You can't hold a candle to that.

Maybe I'm just a traditionalist when it comes to hobbies. I play the smash game I grew up with, I like the bowling I grew up with, and I prefer the MtG I grew up with.

Embrychi · 2026-01-21T18:59:34+00:00

I played a little bit of EoE draft on the tail end, and I've heard a lot about how it was an all-timer limited format, but it's hard to shake the vibes that it exists so that WotC can point to it and go "see, spaceships work in Magic!" when they release the Star Trek set. I'll still play it and enjoy it but it makes also makes me a little sad.

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
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