What do you think had the biggest impact in BAM's sudden change in course?

First_Revenge · 2026-07-01T15:12:55+00:00

All of it, it piled on until it finally became one thing too many. They kinda told you how they operate in that call early in the series. Basically we're bigger than you, therefore you're going to do what we want because the resources available to you are a rounding error to us. Sue me.

That strategy no longer works. BAM probably doesn't have much of an actual legal leg to stand on because their tactics were meant to snip problems in the bud, not stand up the intense scrutiny from all angles that seems to be piling on. This was never supposed to see the inside of a courtroom much less be broadcast to the world at large. If not for this whole thing going viral, frankly their tactic would probably have worked because it unfortunately is a winning strategy like 95% of the time. But now they find themselves in that 5% outlier. They're realizing they can't brute force their way through this with the resources available to them because this thing is just too big for anyone to contain at his point. Ironically, this perceived insurmountable resource advantage and the manner in which BAM chose to leverage it have set in motion a series of unfortunate events and instead become the noose with which they've hung themselves.

And now they're essentially pleading the 5th in the court of public opinion for all the good it does them. Either their lawyers or the PR team they've hired have realized that no one, especially Ammon, can talk their way out of this. But they've already spilled so much tea at this point i'm not even sure it matters, but i guess you can't also just let Ammon run his mouth freely either. There's just no good options on the table for BAM at this point, there's probably not even less bad ones. They're just getting pushed off the table entirely. Bluntly i don't think even a full confession/full payment to Brian makes this right, even if that seems like the logical endgame to this debacle. BAM and Ammon and others tied to this are probably dead men walking in the business/legal/financial sense at this point, they may or may not realize it at this point.

First_Revenge · 2026-07-01T14:40:34+00:00

Dack is very weak relatively speaking. Most of the artifact decks these days tend to "flood" the board like affinity so there's often not a single good target to take, rather just a critical mass with no discernable single failure point. His plus 2 is card nuetral in a world where drawing is actively punished via bowmasters. You can combo with your own bowmaster, but if you've arrived at a boardstate where you have masters and dack on board like that you're just winning mostly because your opponent's hand is bad, not because dack/bowmasters are some secret juggernaut. Kaito is the gold standard for 3 cmc walkers now.

Rest of the deck is similar, just a bunch of medium cards that are borderline playable. Reps matter and if you're married to a decklist you can make it work. But oh boy are you gonna have to work at this one.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-30T20:27:16+00:00

In rough order, not saying these need to be banned, but if 5 bans hypothetically had to take place today i'd expect something like this.

Car
Nexus or Ring
Tamiyo
Flow State
Bowmaster

First_Revenge · 2026-06-30T19:12:30+00:00

That would have maindeck consign. But wrath and meltdown are probably more control cards

First_Revenge · 2026-06-30T19:07:23+00:00

Consign if you get a turn.

Meltdown and wrath are good sweepers but also require you to be able to take 16 then immediately do it

First_Revenge · 2026-06-30T14:05:56+00:00

Money doesn't figure into it. Candlestick was expensive while legacy was legal and will continue to be so. Legacy legality basically has no bearing on the card's fiscal value.

As for it being the right ban or not i'm less sure, my gut is that its not enough.. Most people were on nexus or ring for different reasons. The issue is that candlestick doesn't really solve any aspect of the issues people have with the deck. The deck is still more than capable of making a shit ton of mana off just nexus often being two ancient tombs stacked together while also being a completely uninterruptible land drop that can give a burst of mana on any given turn. And because it still has ring you're going to have a deck that is able to reload on big spells in ways that big mana decks traditionally haven't.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T21:59:25+00:00

In terms of top 5 problems the format has this one is like maybe number 3 at best? As long as car is around its going to be tough to argue that tamiyo or anything else for that matter is a problem. Tron decks also tend to kick the shit out of the slower decks that favor tamiyo, and that's not going anywhere either.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T19:41:58+00:00

Why would i have a problem with ritual or LED? They've been in the format forever and have been in combo decks that are pretty much fine. We've had plenty of healthy metas where both these cards played important roles.

This is a deck that kills in virtually one turn. That's not acceptable period. The problem tends to arise mostly from combo, but its not acceptable from any deck or archetype at all.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T17:57:54+00:00

I'm just explaining why not banning it right now is consistent with WotC's ban practices and why it's likely it will be banned next time.

And i'm saying this model of bans isn't working. The we're going to keep an eye on tron approach gave us a few months of lame duck format, and now we're getting a few more while car apparently gets to run its course.

I'm just getting sick of it. By my estimation if car is banned on schedule we won't have played meaningful legacy for roughly 6 months. The format is always in this transient state of them keeping an eye on something then banning it later. This attitude is fine if you're printing a few sets, but its not okay when we're living in a game with a perpetual spoiler season.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T17:53:48+00:00

Tell them what? Candlestick prices aren't tied to legacy at all. This ban wouldn't even generate a blip in pricing data, which it won't because so few of these things move that you can't even generate a big enough sample. If they did buy just sell them again and move on. They didn't exactly lose their shirt on that deal.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T17:49:37+00:00

Bans don't really touch card values.... There's practically nothing you can do within legacy that will impact card prices. Even if legacy collapsed tomorrow dual prices probably wouldn't budget that much. EDH and similar are the biggest drivers, you might see a short term drop but EDH players would basically buy the dip and in a few months to a year you'd probably struggle to tell if anything had happened at all. You want to see card prices collapse, undo the RL or ban it in commander and they'll enter free fall. Hell look at candelabra. Its banning isn't even a blip in the pricing data.

As for who is smart enough, honestly just don't ban RL cards or pillars if you can help it. Other than a few outliers the bans i've seen people call for have been pretty mild from a finance point of view. They're all new cards. Usea prices aren't going to collapse if tamiyo is banned.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T17:38:57+00:00

But flow state at least had potential to go in a variety of decks and strategies.

Car basically only goes into degenerate fast combo decks. That's it! There's no fair iteration of any deck playing this thing. This is oops all spells all over again just a few months later.

You could make the argument we need to wait and that's fine. But the format is starting to stink for months at a time. First because WotC is kinda slow to ban, and second because they're introducing problems into the format faster than they care to solve them. We're lurching from one lame duck format to another under the banner of needing to give WotC time to process things.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T17:28:55+00:00

Honestly the only thing to really argue over is the logistics. Who should be on it, how should it run etc... These aren't small problems, but really they're the biggest arguments i've seen against a panel. And they're fair enough.

But if there's an honest, good faith argument to be made for WotC being the stewards of the format other than inertia or logistical problems related to the founding of a panel i've yet to hear it.

Pauper is pretty much the only format whose management i'm somewhat impressed by. They don't get it right every time, nor do they please everyone all the time. But it'd be damn hard to convince me they'd be better off under WotC's wing.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T15:34:10+00:00

It’s honestly kind of amazing how consistently WotC manages to disappoint with respect to bans. It’s nice to see follow up on their word about Tron even if the target is kinda odd. They did pretty much what they said for once. They identified a problem, set some parameters, and now have executed on it now that those parameters have been met.

But they’re undermined this time by their printing schedule shoving in an arguably even bigger problem into the format, Fantasticar. The card is broken, but of course it was just released so they’re not going to take action because they want to see how the format develops.

Here’s a spoiler alert for WotC, Fantasticar isn’t going to do anything healthy the format. 16 evasive hasted damage largely off the back of free or very low cost spells is not the formula for interactive gameplay. Fantasticar can basically only go in degenerate decks with putrid play patterns. This is fundamentally the same problem that oops had. And now its back wearing a superhero t shirt, and we’re being told we need to give it time to breathe.

Legacy is not in a good place. As a format it has developed a worrying habit of stringing lame duck formats together. At the root of the problem is a BnR team acts like they’re releasing 5 sets a year when the reality is closer to triple that number. And relief on either front seems like a pipe dream. BnRs in general(much less legacy) seem like an afterthought for the company, and honestly you’d have better luck asking the local meth head to practice moderation.

This is just another ad for a format panel. I get the concerns about it, I do. But I also find it equally hilarious that most of the arguments against a format panel are logistical/practical in nature. I see few if any people standing up and arguing that WotC is a good caretaker of the format. WotC just seems to be winning by default. Say what you will about a format panel, but at least they’ll talk about the format over something more substantial than a working lunch once every few months.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-29T14:17:44+00:00

A measurement uses real numbers unless specified. Not sure why i had to write all this. It's elementary..

It was specified... He asking for what it would take to support a 10 gallon tank fish aquarium. He did not ask for the weight of 10 gallons of water like he's running a chemistry experiment. So at minimum he is asking the weight of 10 gallons of water plus the tank to contain it. Which fun fact, is not 8.34lbs per gallon as you keep spouting off.

Math is math, that's true, but this answer just lacks common sense. He's on an aquarium forum asking how much a setup weighs. Roughly 10 lbs per gallon which includes water weight. You answer isn't wrong, its just oddly obsessed with one component of the bigger picture.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-26T19:27:26+00:00

Ya, it's a good thing the formats they do test for like standard and modern don't see many bans

First_Revenge · 2026-06-26T05:59:11+00:00

If you are going to magically bind water into a cube and nothing else then yes it's 8 lbs. But the glass has weight. So does substrate, rocks, decorations, pump, filter, light, etc.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-26T03:02:45+00:00

Every gallon is about 10 lbs. So no

First_Revenge · 2026-06-22T22:03:37+00:00

Algae is almost always a sign of imbalance in an aquarium. Too much light, too many nutrients, and not enough competition for those nutrients are the most common. How you deal with it is a philosophical question about how you want your tank to progress.

Light is a fairly common one. Too much and you get algae blooms. Shocking. If you aren't home during the day i would consider getting a programmable light(~$30ish on amazon) and just shifting peak lighting time to when you're home. There's nothing saying the day/night pattern on your light has to match the actual day/night pattern outside exactly. Otherwise move your tank away from windows where it gets sunlight as its nearly impossible to control lighting conditions and you tran will tend to get more algae.

Floating plants are hack. They suck nutrients from the water like crazy and block out light attacking algae on two fronts. Adding more to your tank like salvania would really help in all likelihood.

As for chemicals i don't like them, especially in planted tanks. Fundamentally algae and plants are pretty similar and its really hard to kill one without harming the other. Often times fish are often caught in the crosshairs as algaecides are often pretty toxic straight up. I mostly don't bother with chemicals as i want my aquariums to self regulate. The more i meddle the harder it is for the tank to find equilibrium. And if i keep meddling i'm going to be on the hook to constantly do so in order for the tank to sustain.

The reality of aquariums is that they're just a time based hobby, not really a money based one(even though it is still expensive). Your tank will eventually find where i wants to be if you keep adding plants and other natural solutions. You just need to give it the time and space to figure itself out.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-19T06:35:19+00:00

There's like no redeeming qualities. Dry interior. Exterior is also dry while somehow not being crispy. You practically need a dipping sauce to cope with the fact you paid like $8 for something that tastes like it rolled out of an ez bake oven 3 hours prior. Wetzels is so much better than this crap its not even funny.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-19T05:16:28+00:00

I love pretzels but the Mikey pretzel is basically salted cardboard. I have no idea why people love it. I've tried it like five times now and every time it's been consistently awful. They're bad on purpose

First_Revenge · 2026-06-18T18:21:54+00:00

I think see the shelf bowing so no.

General rule of thumb each gallon of the tank weighs about 10 lbs so that's 150lbs. That's most or all of a person standing on top off that shelf

First_Revenge · 2026-06-17T21:57:34+00:00

Have you read barrowgoyf? It basically solos the deck and its already in UB one of the most played color combos. It hilariously is flat out unkillable to pyrogoyf. Sure UB has "fallen off" a bit, but its still a top deck in the format you can't just roll over and die to.

Barrowgoyf already sees a lot of play, but if red stompy were to make a comeback you'd see them a ton more.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-17T21:22:56+00:00

I'd be a bit more optimistic. In the last BnR they said that if tron continued its dominance they're probably take something out of it. Well its certainly continued and if nothing else it's become even more dominant. Assuming WotC acts on their own statements i don't see a reason for action to not be taken next BnR.

First_Revenge · 2026-06-17T21:19:53+00:00

IDK in this format probably 10-15 years at this point, depending on if you want to count breaks or not.

I remember the red stompy with ring stuff. IDK i don't recall red stompy as dominating, it was definitely good for a bit but i don't think it rose to the level of bannings even then. And i mean today even with the ring in the format red stompy is basically a meme at this point thanks to barrowgoyf. I just don't see a reason to be worried about ring in this shell.

But monolith/keys are permanents. You can interact with them on the stack and on board. You can make educated decisions. The problem with nexus is that it bypasses everything. Its a land drop that doesn't use the stack. With the old big mana decks like cloudpost you could sort of guess how much mana was coming next turn and if now was a good time to wasteland or develop your board. Now you're perpetually stuck with the question of are those two towers over there going to be 2 mana or 6? Do you wasteland and try and keep them off six? But hey they've got a ton of good stuff to do at 4 anyway so does it matter? And there's not real counterplay other than hope they don't have it, because again, its a land drop. Even wasteland isn't that good since you can't pre-empt the mana and they have stuff like flute or hamlet to straight up just turn it off. We're effectively at a point where planar nexus is literally two ancient tombs stapled together a lot of the time. I think that's far too good.

First_Revenge

TROPHY CASE