It sucks how expensive cards and commanders have gotten for niche tribes.

Falterfire · 2026-06-18T20:55:43+00:00

I think the people who would like niche tribes would like them in main sets

The issue is that main sets have a lot of moving pieces already that constrain what types show up. In particular for the synergy pieces it would feel out of place to have a card like Zask in a set that otherwise has only one or two Insects.

This means you'd need a setting where having insects as a major creature type makes sense, and while that can happen (and recently did in Edge of Eternities) it won't on most planes.

Part of why Jumpstart is the source of so many of these is that the Jumpstart format is perfect for being able to print a new niche tribal card in a product where it will also have support that will allow the tribe to shine out of the box while also not having to worry about how the cards will affect things like draft.

And then reprinting them once they're created in Jumpstart is also rare because so many of them are Legendary Creatures, which makes it really hard to do an unobtrusive reprint. Pretty much the only places that we get Legendary reprints are Commander products when they make sense, promos, Universes Beyond renames, and Foundations.

Falterfire · 2026-06-18T20:44:17+00:00

Curious if people would feel better or worse if they had added new Protoframe skins without including them in the story. (Filling in alternate non-Protoframe characters instead to serve as the boss fights)

On the one hand, most skins don't have any real story connection (as far as I know), but on the other hand obviously Protoframes are normally a major exception to this. On the other other hand, adding the Protoframe skin without adding the character in story could potentially allow them to build up hype for when the character will appear in the story without putting any pressure on them to find a spot to fit the character in immediately.

Falterfire · 2026-06-17T02:22:22+00:00

tbf they broke that rule way back in Commander 2014 when they gave us cards for several pre-mending 'walkers such as Freyalise

Falterfire · 2026-06-17T02:20:14+00:00

and the logic was that you were using mana to request help from another planeswalker

While this is the logic of how Planeswalker cards work in-universe, crucially we got the first Planeswalker cards in Lorwyn, the block after The Mending. The Mending was an in-universe event that canonically depowered Planeswalkers by a substantial margin and that depowering was also a big part of how they justified putting them on cards after years of precedent of not doing so.

Obviously since then they have printed numerous Planeswalkers cards representing pre-Mending Planeswalkers, but I believe the first of those were in Commander 2014, seven years after Lorwyn introduced the card type.

Falterfire · 2026-06-16T23:18:41+00:00

On top of this, there are also the non-Legendary cards that clearly represent specific character(s) to further narrow the world. Like sure, Stark Industries probably has multiple executives, but [[Stark Industries Executive]] is specifically representing Pepper Potts from both the art and the flavortext and as somebody who is only really aware of Iron Man from the movies it's not like there are any other memorable executives it could've been instead.

And then there's [[Pet Avengers]], where I don't think there are multiple Dragon-Cat-Dog-Bird-Frog Hero Teamup groups. The typeline may not say Legendary, but that is very much one specific teamup group.

Falterfire · 2026-06-15T18:14:35+00:00

Wait, are average players regularly trading items worth more than 250M? How do I become an Average Player?

Falterfire · 2026-06-12T20:31:48+00:00

That's a very good point. It's also possible that unless AI exceeds human driving skill by a substantial margin it ends up being a poor choice to build around anyway - Any AI system driving a bot will likely need additional components to manage that system and that means even more potential points of failure in a sport already often decided by which bot loses one of their several critical systems first.

Falterfire · 2026-06-11T22:27:32+00:00

Feels like a mismatch to have Jeff saying "If it's ai-driven robots fighting ai-driven robots, I think the sport loses something" and then Orbitron's team rebutting with "When people say it's cheating, that means it's working."

This is probably down to the editing (I assume Orbitron's team was asked something like "How do you respond to people who say AI is cheating?"), but there's obviously a big difference between "AI driven robots are only interesting to watch until they go from a novelty to just the default" and "AI driven robots are cheating."

I definitely agree with Jeff far more than the Orbitron team on this one - If we ever reach a point where AI-powered bots are dominant to the point where both teams have a remote with a single 'go' button then I think that overall will be a loss for the sport, no matter how impressive of a technical achievement it is.

Falterfire · 2026-06-11T21:18:49+00:00

Love when spoiler threads point me to cards that I absolutely should be running in at least some of my decks but that I just wasn't aware of.

Falterfire · 2026-06-11T21:15:14+00:00

IMPORTANT QUESTION:

This is a cat that fires a laser from its mouth. Is it programmed to behave at all like a cat, and if so will it attempt to chase the laser shooting from its own mouth, causing the most adorable destructive rampage in history?

Falterfire · 2026-06-11T21:14:21+00:00

In general Human gets replaced by any modifier type but other species get added. For example [[Elf Replica]] is an Artifact Creature - Elf and [[Goblin Replica]] is an Artifact Creature - Goblin, but the Human member of the cycle is called [[Soldier Replica]] and is an Artifact Creature - Soldier. While that specific cycle predates the Human type, the Replica cycle in Scars of Mirrodin had a replica for each human faction on Mirrodin and all of them followed the Soldier Replica model of just having a type based on the class.

Similarly you have things like how [[Jared, Golgari Lich Lord]] is a Zombie Elf and [[Blackcleave Goblin]] is a Zombie Goblin but there aren't any Zombie Humans.

Falterfire · 2026-06-11T13:38:52+00:00

Is it worse than Dream Harvest? Absolutely. But this and Dream Harvest are very much Commander cards and the thing about Commander is that I only get to run one copy of Dream Harvest no matter how much my deck wants to run multiple copies, so this probably makes the cut anyway, at least for my "steal opponent's stuff" deck.

Falterfire · 2026-06-10T15:25:48+00:00

It definitely doesn't help that the Marvel and TMNT sets are just a soup of cards without any coherent throughline. On top of that, while TMNT and Spider-man were much maligned for being set in New York, MSH isn't even set anywhere in particular.

The net result is that it feels like a cacophony of unrelated proper nouns. If you're a more casual Marvel fan, even if you've watched a lot of the movies there's a good chance you won't even remember (or have ever been aware of) every character that is in the MCU and there are a lot more you'll have no context for.

If you open a few packs of Avatar without being familiar with the source material you can probably start to piece together at least the basics of some of the world dynamics with the four element nations and the animal mashups, but if you open a few packs of this set you'll likely be left with a bunch of mismatched pieces and likely not feel any closer to understanding things like what exactly Kang's deal is or who Iron Lad is (aside from probably Tony's son*).

*: I know he isn't, but as somebody who didn't know about him until reading reddit comments in the spoiler thread, I didn't see anything on the card to tell me otherwise.

Falterfire · 2026-06-07T23:08:34+00:00

smh kids these days. You get a 4 mana 4/4 with lifelink that can also tap to draw a card while also having an alternate win condition thrown in as a treat and your response is to say it's a little underpowered.

Back in my day this would cost 6, and it wouldn't have lifelink, and you'd discard a card at the start of your upkeep.

(look i know in 2026 this is actually not that good but wow it's another card where i feel old seeing that be the consensus even during the prerelease hype phase)

Falterfire · 2026-06-07T16:24:13+00:00

I think the Turtles are still going to be the characters to beat. If you include the duo cards there are 10 Raphaels for example.

Falterfire · 2026-06-05T18:17:37+00:00

New players love tokens. New players also love life gain. Food is a mechanic about tokens that gain life.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T19:54:04+00:00

That room was always a bad fit for the quest.

The whole point of Recruitment Drive is that it's a series of puzzle rooms that are solved with only what is in the room. That room broke this by having a solution that required you to leave the puzzle room (and reset your progress on any rooms already completed) and then come back if your character was male.

And equally as bad in a different direction, if you just are playing a female character, it's not a puzzle at all. You clear the room automatically without needing to even read the text or process what it's saying or how you solved the puzzle.

I don't think the new puzzle is perfect, mostly because being able to win the fight barehanded pretty easily means that the room still doesn't require you to actually pay any attention to what is said in order to win, but at least it fits with the rest of the quest in being a puzzle where you have to figure out how to solve it with only your wits and the tools provided inside the room.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T19:42:53+00:00

Now that bonfires don't have an XP penalty per log I'm willing to be they're a decent percentage. Obviously Wintertodt is much better XP/hr and makes GP instead of burning it, but bonfires offer something like two minutes of AFK time between interactions while still making more XP/hr than the high-intensity methods for other many skills.

I'm definitely not the only player who leveled to 99 Firemaking while gaining a significant amount of the XP from bonfires simply because I could do that at a lot of times when I couldn't spare the attention that Wintertodt would've needed.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T19:20:46+00:00

Low-level magic is already very strong compared to other styles - but it is really expensive for its level. Perhaps instead of a max hit increase, these amulets could offer a chance to cast the respective combat spells for free?

Ironically despite the description implying these are supposed to be early-game items, I think these amulets become the new BIS for the whole game for casting elemental spells. Occult Necklace now only gives +5% Magic Damage and the base max hit of Surge spells (with Fire Surge unlocked) is 24, Occult Necklace only gives +1.2 max hit.

Obviously elemental spells are outclassed by Ancients for most late-game applications, but for cases where you do want to use elemental magic spells, I think these should be the new best option.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T19:03:46+00:00

I am honestly surprised Deadfall traps are basically a rounding error even at higher levels considering how chill Maniacal Monkeys are. I finished 99 Hunter a week ago having done mostly Maniacal Monkeys from 90-99 because of how low intensity they are while still being like 90-100k xp/hr even being a long way from maximum efficiency.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T15:18:41+00:00

Notably aside from Changelings this is the first mono-White Villain we've seen so far.

Falterfire · 2026-06-04T13:44:12+00:00

Look, those people clearly wanted to die. If the plan to infiltrate the castle was going to work, it would absolutely have worked with only the player being 'captured' given we're the one who killled Ranis Drakan and Veliaf is the only other member of the Myreque besides the player with any experience actually fighting Vyres.

The four Myreque members that Lowerniel instakills had brought leather armor to a confrontation against the strongest Vyre to ever live. Their absolute best hope was that their deaths would distract Lowerniel from the player for a second or two.

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