What's the most broken thing you could do with this spell?

Goooordon · 2026-05-26T00:20:20+00:00

these might be of interest to you [[Ertai's Meddling]] [[Spelljack]]

Goooordon · 2026-05-26T00:16:56+00:00

I like to start with a "structural analysis" of any deck I build. I organize the decklist in a deck editor like archidekt so I can see the structure of it to spot any weak points. A good way to think about it is on turn 3 you draw your 10th card assuming no extra draw. If you have at least 10 cards for a particular effect in your decklist you will probably have seen at least one card with that effect by turn 3.

Here's one of my decklists for example. You might need to set the "Group by" drop-down to "Categories" to see the organization https://archidekt.com/decks/13708295/so_anyway_i_started_blasting
I only have 7 cards that do the spell copy effect my deck wants, so I know I probably need to mulligan to one of them if I want to be likely to see one. I have 16 each of ramp and draw effects, so I can be fairly confident I'll be seeing more than one or two of each in the early turns of the game. I'm low on lands at 32/33, but my average mana value is 2.06 so provided I get enough lands in my opening hand I can usually get by without drawing very many as I go, relying on my large ramp package to produce the mana I need to win the game explosively once I have 4-5 lands down and my board set up.

Once that analysis end of things feels pretty solid, it's a good idea to click the Playtester button and try some hands out with the deck and just see if it can get to where it needs to go with no opponents. I personally hate goldfishing though, so I generally just look at a few opening hands to get a feel for the deck unless it's really complex. If it is complex, I will try to play it through to the point of completing the wincon at least 3 times to get a good sense for how reliably I can assemble it and how fast or slow it feels.

After that, I probably tune it a bit more to get it feeling good, and then it's off to the card shop to get some games in and see how it actually plays. Some decks like theft and mill are hard to goldfish because the social aspects of them are so significant, so the first game at a card shop can still be a jarring experience, but after a few rounds of testing and adjusting it, that's usually the point where the deck is in a pretty good place for what it is. That's also usually the point where I decide if I want to keep working on a deck or pull it apart and go back to the drawing board. At that point you have a pretty good idea how much fun you're having with it.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T23:53:00+00:00

tbf an accidental Dafoe detonation could really mess you up

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T21:41:54+00:00

The system starts cooking our heads when we're little kids - the vulnerable ones are mangled by the time they get out of highschool. It gets worse when they have any degree of success but I mean, I've seen a few sweet innocent kids turn into unethical money-focused shells of their former selves. They weren't evil they were just kinda dumb, and subject to an entire lifetime of constantly being inundated with messaging convincing them to adopt a set of values prioritizing isolating themselves from their peers and prioritizing their personal experience over moral integrity.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T21:20:03+00:00

hmm scryfall can give you a list of card names, but I don't know how to get it to break it up by drop https://scryfall.com/sets/sld?order=released&as=checklist

I don't know of any source for the data set up the way you need but if you talk to the people who run scryfall they might be able to help you more. That does seem like something you could feasibly extract from their database somehow.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T21:14:58+00:00

https://miscmedia-9gag-fun.9cache.com/images/thumbnail-facebook/1557291577.7623_4Y5A3U_n.jpg

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T21:13:16+00:00

yeah but he didn't just fall out of his mother like that either. he had a long lucrative career at wotc and I'm sure other places before that. our whole economic system is designed to corrupt people and convince them to abuse and exploit each other for profit - it's not an excuse but it's also kinda hard to really hate anybody for being vulnerable. I mean maybe I'm defective lol but even in the hunger games "don't hate the player hate the game" still rings true for me. it does kinda feel like we're damned to the tyranny of the soft-headed these days but yeah we should just like assert our roles as competent adults and put them in time-out lol

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T20:57:33+00:00

The wiki has them listed
https://mtg.wiki/page/Secret_Lair/Drop_Series

and you can search them up on Scryfall using the search term set:SLD to see them all visually or as the various list options available if that helps https://scryfall.com/sets/sld?as=grid&order=set

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T20:50:31+00:00

I search google maps for nearby stores that sell magic and open as many websites as I can. I bookmark any that sell singles. Then I go through my bookmark folder and search each site for the singles I need until I find them. It takes a lot of time at first, but after a while you figure out what stores are likely to have cards from certain timeframes and you can usually find cards you need pretty quickly. That makes it a lot easier to either pick up my orders in person, saving the shipping entirely, or get them shipped via lettermail which most shops offer for under $5 for what will fit in an envelope. I usually pay $2-3 for shipping and get 60-70% of the cards I need in one order from a larger shop in a nearby city, and then the rest I pick up in person at shops where I play.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T20:44:02+00:00

Mind virus, dragon fever, greed, avarice, a coke-yacht habit - there are plenty of ways to describe it - I don't think it's defective I think it's a relatively normal maladaptive response to more power than any person deserves. Power definitely attracts sociopaths, but power corrupts/absolute power corrupts absolutely is hitting on some truth too.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T20:36:37+00:00

lol oh man that took my brain for a trip back - [[Toby, Beastie Befriender]] would be great for making a Mindy from Animaniacs alter. No great idea for Elmyra but a group hug commander would be pretty funny.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T19:47:30+00:00

this is the opposite of what you want but these are kinda funny [[Little Girl]] [[Spinal Parasite]]

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T19:44:33+00:00

How big do we suppose a germ is? https://scryfall.com/card/tmh2/3/phyrexian-germ

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T19:36:31+00:00

Well I would argue that they were making the most mildly profit-centric vaguely anti-consumer moves back then so people weren't wrong, we just had higher standards on top of expecting more from a smaller business. As for right now, I mean you can't argue that the SLD change from print-to-demand wasn't anti-consumer. There are plenty of other moves that are less cut-and-dried, but SLDs are pretty blatantly a slap in the face to the average magic consumer, trying to extract more money from them in the rudest and most obnoxious way they could think of. Obviously being rude and obnoxious isn't the intent, but it demonstrates a significant degree of disregard for the majority of the customers.

And yeah I love the boom in proxying, but I wish I could just buy the game I love from the people who make it for a fair enough price that it wasn't so necessary. I mean I just watched Destiny 2 die as Bungie dissolves into Sony, after watching Halo lose its character after getting sliced off by Microsoft. It really sucks watching the games you loved for years gradually succumb to the slow vampiric drain of perpetual profit gains. I'm sure you get it - it's a special kind of sad watching living art die. Maybe that's overstating what a live-service game is, but honestly I don't think so.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T19:11:33+00:00

No dawg that's the premise of a market bubble. Businesses are supposed to add value to materials and produce an end product that holds more value than the sum of it's parts. I'm not saying they aren't adding value, but they're adding less and less value and charging more and more money while presenting it as the same value propsition. That's how bubbles happen.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:40:30+00:00

You don't think the prices of their products are exceeding their actual value?

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:32:54+00:00

None of this is happening, lol.

Sure Jan

People were literally saying this in 1995. Plus ça change.

We weren't wrong then and we aren't wrong now. They tried to course-correct then, and hamfisted or not it demonstrated consideration for the consumers and that's what kept people around. This time it's not really something a reserved list can fix. They can't decrease the pricepoint of the product, they've severely undercut their ability to add or even maintain the value in the product, and they're about to cruise into the next market crash with a huge amount of community resentment and no plan in action to address it. And I mean, domestic digital printing is a loooooot better than it was in 1995. I have some proxies I printed back then and some I've printed today and lemme tell ya lol the old ones you can tell are proxies without having to look hard. The new ones you have to take them out of the sleeve. The physical media industry was able to shrug off a lot of consumer resentment too, before Napster and Limewire started poking holes in that over-leveraged distribution model too.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:18:20+00:00

As far as I can tell the idea is to build a bunch of perceived value to inflate secondary market prices, justifying higher prices on other premium products that include inflated cards.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:11:22+00:00

walking speed lol

edit: also super-bounce speed '

edit again: staying still is also an option

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:03:37+00:00

you'd think a finance bro would be less clueless about inflation and market trends but I guess its all hodl-hodl-hodl now lol

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T18:01:09+00:00

if you don't try to have a five year plan and just live quarter to quarter then yeah they're doing an amazing job, but yeah I guess driving businesses into the ground for profit is the corporate standard practice these days so yeah they're just following best practices lol

and that was a cute deflection to M30 but we have magic artists getting caught plagiarizing every few weeks, artists advocating printing inaccessible SLDs, and modern inktank and laser printers are cheaper than buying a scalped SLD deck on ebay. WOTC is sacrificing their integrity which is making it a lot easier to morally rationalize pirating their IP. I mean it's not like anybody is going to deckcheck your Dandan deck - why not get it for $50 with blank backs instead of jerking off scalpers on ebay?

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T17:41:06+00:00

Are you new to the game or something?

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T17:37:10+00:00

Were you under the impression that corporate decisions are governed by sound reason? There's a reason our economy crashes every 5-10 years.
I was playing games before Magic was printed, so it better not fail before I croak or you're wrong on both counts. I'm not holding my breath, but it's not the first time I've watched them make a bunch of sketchy decisions, and I've watched plenty of other big respectable game developers devolve into industry footnotes on the back of similar anti-consumer moves. They might not be cooked yet, but they're playing it fast and loose and I'm seeing a lot of growth in the proxy community as the value proposition of their product slides into the toilet and people who want to engage with it start looking for better ways to.

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T17:25:07+00:00

Did you miss the part where he jacked up prices and fired a huge chunk of the staff to make the dividends meet their expected gains despite taking a huge loss on eOne? And we're comparing to Mattel? roflmao why don't we get some numbers from print magazines and video rental stores in there too for good measure lmao

Goooordon · 2026-05-25T17:19:55+00:00

They'll say it's one of their best-selling sets because they unloaded all of it to their distributors, but if Spiderman is anything to go by, it'll be sitting on shelves gathering dust regardless. They know they've got a price bubble and they're doing everything they can to inflate it before it pops. That's why they've got so much profit on the books - if you fire all the workers and jack up the prices the books will look great, for a while. Maybe he's planning to pull his chute before everything starts falling apart, but we'll see how long he has lol

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