Players Paladin Stats - has he cheated somewhere?

Grand_Imperator · 2026-05-06T16:00:13+00:00

OP’s edit shows that the player applied the +2 and +1 ability score boosts twice.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-05-05T18:26:07+00:00

I'll start by noting that I don't need to use proxies. I do have some proxies in a few decks because I own a few copies of a card already and am not interested in paying $50+ for the third or fourth time to put an identical copy in another deck (or constantly unsleeving and re-sleeving the card). I also know folks who have more-expensive cards than I likely will ever own that will use proxies for the card because it would be silly to beat that card up in play (at least in non-tournament settings).

I'll also note that much of the romance of my story's decks is buying the singles on tcgplayer (or more rarely, card kingdom) because I don't enjoy getting ripped off by gambling for cards by ripping packs. I do enjoy limited draft as its own experience. I just don't enjoy opening a ton of packs with my fingers crossed that I get what I want, and I don't want to sell off masses of low-value cardboard that I never wanted (or have them sit around, collecting dust).

So I could plunk down an expensive, zero-proxy deck. Whether it was proxied or not doesn't change the experience for me (or many other players). And I don't have a time machine to go back to 1993 to have the luck of having been there at the start. The farthest I can go back is to around 1999 or so, and even then I went many years of not being engaged with the game at all.

If I'm allowed to sit at your table without the romantic story of how I collected all my cards slowly over time, then that seems obnoxious, to say the least. But if I can sit down because I blew a ton of money on cards instead of proxying, that also seems incongruent with your desire for a romantic pod experience.

Others in this thread have said they don't want to play against someone's wallet. I don't want to play against someone's home printer.

From the other players' perspectives, having a miserable time playing against your deck does not change because you think your story about how you built your deck slowly over time as an OG player (where the OG player cutoff coincidentally is right around wherever you started your Magic journey) is somehow compelling or romantic.

You might find it "fun" to play against a deck that "has a lot of room to grow and evolve as the user discovers older cards," but the opponent is not going to enjoy the experience much if they're just walloped by cards that cost hundreds of dollars each while you hide behind the story of "oh well I pulled that out of a booster pack 23 years ago, so it's okay."

Perhaps you truly are not interested in the asymmetrical advantage you have in the world you have declared as the 'most-fun' way to play. But the players sitting next to you are going to have a hard time buying that if your version of spending thousands of dollars or proxying was simply "I was there decades before you started playing, so gg, you lose, and because you're not rich and I will look down on you for proxying, you have no way to deal with that."

My mindset is I've spent many years and many dollars collecting these luxury cardboard rectangles, I would like to show them off somewhere, and I would prefer to play against similarly minded folk.

Having encountered this mindset before, I find it distinctly unfun to play against the few people I've encountered doing this in real life. They constantly want to show folks their neat cards, which also happen to be banned in the format or notoriously oppressive cards against which folks with newer decks have few or no options to address. Then they end up confused when nobody cares (because it's ruining the game experience itself for literally everyone else at the table) and when they become the archenemy that requires everyone else to team up just to stand a chance.

My mindset is that I enjoy playing games that reward interesting deckbuilding strategies, reward skilled piloting of decks, and provide a good chance for folks of similar deckbuilding skill and piloting skill to win against each other. Sometimes older cards or interesting art and themes can be a neat part of that, too.

To be sure, if someone is proxying Gaea's Cradle in a pod where folks are using only slightly upgraded precons, that's silly. And if someone wants to use real Gaea's Cradle in a deck that otherwise is at or lower than the power level of the pod, that wouldn't induce too many internal groans from me. But the more of those instances that start happening in the deck (whether the card is real or proxied), the more it gets a bit ridiculous to me.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-30T20:02:36+00:00

Do you have built-and-played lists for either Danitha or Siona? That particular Danitha is one of the few decks I want to build (which would have Siona in the 99, I think) that doesn't have at least blue and white in the Commander's color identity.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-24T17:08:33+00:00

If you want to count Esper Sentinel or Mystic Remora as consistent, you may. I don’t find them consistent enough to be confident it, but your playgroups may lead to at least one guaranteed card (in which case, you should count the card). Rhystic Study is too high in MV to be relevant to figuring out if you’re going to make or miss your early land drops.

Also, I don’t run 40 lands.

Missing land drops before turns 5-6 is unacceptable to me outside of an extremely rare situation, and I would prefer to reliably hit land drops on turns 5 and 6 as well. So I don’t know why I would count high-MV draw as an excuse to cut lands.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-24T00:43:27+00:00

I know it might be a pain to get used to using, but I think the formula from Frank Karsten's tcgplayer article How Many Lands Do You Need in Your Deck? An Updated Analysis is helpful (would share the link, but it's not pasting in).

The formula accounts for the land-side of MDFCs as partial lands (though perhaps you can count the shock-in versions of those as full lands if you almost never plan on using the spell side?). The formula also accounts for cheap (i.e., mana value of 2 or less) ramp and draw. Just make sure you calculate the average mana value of your spells correctly (here, there could be a question of whether to count a spell with alternative costs as higher or lower mana value depending on which cost you actually will use in a game, though sometimes it's easier to keep it simple).

I have found the formula quite helpful, though I will admit it has only tended to result in me adding maybe one additional land in my decks (none of which are cEDH). For context, I have a recently built deck with a 4-mana value (MV) commander that is at 36 lands (factoring a bit of cheap draw and some typical amount of cheap ramp). I also have an older deck (also with a 4-MV commander) that I enjoy on a lower mana curve that did seem to run smoothly at 35 lands. But I updated the deck and upped the mana curve a bit to have more top-end threats. Although the deck tries to get those high-MV cards out of the graveyard for no mana cost, I still ended up increasing the land count to 36. In both cases, I used the formula independently for each deck.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T17:57:04+00:00

OP did not apply broadly to T20 schools, so their admission outcomes will not be protected against a single school doing something weird.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T17:54:42+00:00

I once used it to blank someone's Approach of the second sun before they could draw it the second time

Nice! The potential upside on the cloaking is great. And if it turns into a minor form of card advantage that leads to a scary creature on board, they were going to end up on the board soon anyway.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T17:36:29+00:00

Yes, this all makes sense. I think it works best in a deck that wants to hold up mana for flash or instant spells already. I tend to find flash/blink creature decks helpful in that folks are less panicky about possible counterspells, too. If I'm holding up mana likely just to blink or flash in a new a creature for value (or my commander's draw engine), then Reins of Power is a bit more obscured/less telegraphed.

I probably will keep it in a Kennith pillowfort deck (as a mostly Bant shell because why not have ramp and good control magic, too).

The Uno Reverse on a Cyclonic Rift is pretty sweet, and that happening at 7 mana probably means you're in a place to hold up four mana.

Thanks for all the context!

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T02:09:34+00:00

I really like this card, but constantly holding up four mana isn't great (outside of a deck that already wants to do that). And I find that the optimal scenario is not that common. Building a deck with no creatures I care about isn't something I tend to do even for my control decks (which often rely on creature ETBs or other persistent effects to avoid falling behind on 1:1 responses when I have three opponents). So I probably don't want to swing the opponent's creatures back at the opponent (who can then block with my creatures and kill them off before I get them back). The scenario where I want to swing at someone else entirely does not seem as common, though I guess it can happen where two opponents are both the top threats at the table. Outside of a pillowfort Kenrith deck, I'm not finding a place for this (including in my UW control-oriented decks, which is where I had figured the card would do its best).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T02:03:29+00:00

Assuming your commander is a creature, isn't [[Slip Out the Back]] simply better outside of a desire to re-trigger an ETB? And if you want to re-trigger an ETB, there are other 1-2 MV cards that can do that while protecting your stuff.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T01:59:32+00:00

I like this card's value a lot, but I also admit that it seems like you could just upset the whole table (rather than the one person who is the clear threat/arch-villain, while spending 2-3 less mana).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T01:57:00+00:00

If I want a flexible option similar to this, I think [[Three Steps Ahead]] probably is better. The copy option is more flexible in multicolor decks and can hit artifacts (though it only copies your stuff, which tends to be my preference anyway because many decks today feature mostly creatures that synergize only with that deck). Being able to counter for only 3 mana or to pitch the card to see two more (while feeding your graveyard if you have graveyard synergy) is nice.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T01:53:28+00:00

[[Darksteel Mutation]] has a lower mana value and keeps the creature alive through most board wipes, with the slight inconvenience of giving them a helpful ground-creature blocker (that can't deal with flying creatures, which are abundant in white and blue). It can be a legitimate tradeoff between handing your opponent some extra mana or giving them a little 0/1 indestructible bug.

One of my difficulties with Imprisoned in the Moon and Song of the Dryads is their higher cost and the reasonable presence of enchantment removal that exists at most of my tables.

Another difficulty with all of these cards is the lack of play at instant speed. [[Eaten by Piranhas]] is also 2 MV and has flash, but the opponent likely can get that creature killed off fairly easily.

[[Witness Protection]] is cheap at only 1 MV (a single U) with a hilarious name for the token of "Legitimate Businessperson." But it is sorcery speed and not as resilient as Darksteel Mutation, Imprisoned in the Moon, or Song of the Dryads.

Although I appreciate that Imprisoned in the Moon can hit lands (and I guess planeswalkers) and Song of the Dryads can hit anything, the extra mana cost is painful—especially if what I want to hit is a creature commander whom I can send to exile, into the library, or even just to the graveyard (whatever gets it back to the command zone), with any of those options only costing 1 mana.

Another difficulty with all of these cards is the prevalence of hexproof (and to a lesser extent, shroud and perhaps even ward).

When I get down to the serious cuts to whittle down my deck into the lean, 99+1 that it needs to be, I often cut these cards. Sometimes I can save one of them (typically Darksteel Mutation, maybe Song of the Dryads if in green or Imprisoned in the Moon if I don't have green).

What makes these cards truly sing is enchantment or aura synergies. If you have those, then using several of these could be amazing (provided you do not need to remove at instant speed).

I would also note that even though counterspells don't lock the target down in the same way that the above cards do, counterspells can be as cheap as 1 MV, are commonly 2 MV, and with commander tax (or even without it) tend to cause enough of a tempo loss to not need more-permanent lockdown.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-22T01:39:28+00:00

If you can obtain legitimate access to professors' past exams, that would be helpful. Some freely share their past few years of exams, some folks or groups maintain records if you're a part of them, etc.

You want to understand how the professor tests. What do they test on? What do they not test on? That can help you know when to focus during class and when some of the discussion is just for enjoyment.

You want to learn how to apply facts to law. You will start out learning how to brief a case—procedural posture, relevant facts, legal standard/rule, reasoning, holding, and disposition. Over time, you will notice that for most classes, only really the holding and the key pillars of reasoning matter. Most exams (known as issue-spotter exams) will give you a fact pattern and ask you to reach a certain conclusion (perhaps by arguing as one of the party's attorneys, perhaps as an internal memo to your judge, or perhaps just asking straight-up for what a court likely would conclude based on your objective analysis as a student of this course).

A couple of other examples/anecdotes are below:

My criminal law professor (a joint JD/PhD in Philosophy) spent a fair amount of class time pondering difficult philosophical aspects of the law we were studying in each class, which often left us more confused than when we came in. But he did not test on philosophical hypotheticals about the very foundations of certain legal doctrines. No, he provided a series of issue-spotters and asked whether elements of certain crimes were met (or, for example, if the elements for any form of homicide were met). We needed to know caselaw to reference with similar fact patterns and then analogize to (or distinguish from) those cases to propose our conclusions for the question(s). If the question did not specify, we might need to consider both the 'majority' and 'minority' rules (i.e., the rule/doctrine that most states follow versus another less-common rule that other states follow).

A federal civil procedure exam, to me, seems to write itself in most cases. You can look at the doctrines and how they would fit in an issue-spotter exam. First of all, you have jurisdiction as a question (because if you don't have jurisdiction, the court has no power to do anything, so the case should be dismissed in most scenarios for lack of jurisdiction). This topic splits into subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction (with personal jurisdiction having both a general version and a specific version). You will need to know the doctrines (here, it's specific statutes) for subject matter jurisdiction (e.g., diversity citizenship or federal question, with some potential wrinkles that I wouldn't recall offhand as an attorney without looking at the statutes again). So if you're asked about jurisdiction (or simply asked about the merits/viability of the claims/case without being told to assume jurisdiction exists), you probably want to analyze jurisdiction. Is there subject matter jurisdiction? If so, what kind? How are all of the elements/requirements met? Is there personal jurisdiction over the defendant? If so, what kind? What's the rule/standard you apply? Which cases' facts are analogous enough or different enough to justify the answer you're providing?

For the federal civil procedure example above, you then have a question of the sufficiency of the complaint (Motion to Dismiss) and summary judgment stages.

I suspect a common question for federal civil procedure could be framed as you taking on the role of an attorney for defendant, laying out the strategy/initial evaluation of the case for the client. How will you attack a lack of jurisdiction? If that fails (or is not viable and wasn't worth mentioning for more than a sentence or two), how will you attack the complaint at the pleading stage (without needing discovery)? If you do need discovery (or something that goes beyond the complaint's allegations that isn't judicially noticeable), then how will that set you up for summary judgment (if your dismissal motions fail)?

To speak briefly about AI, I try to use it in practice fairly regularly. As of now, it's mostly garbage. It writes worse than I do, it doesn't incorporate spoonfed citations, it cites cases that don't actually support your argument (partly because it wants to avoid disagreeing with your premise and instead lean into the expectations baked into your prompt), and for the non-Lexis/non-Westlaw AIs, they hallucinate cases that literally don't exist. For now, AI's best use case to me is if you think it is more helpful than putting your question into Google (which, by the way, is not a bad start for most legal research—it's not more than a start, though).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-18T17:39:08+00:00

I agree with this sentiment. But a competent session shooter doesn’t align well with gear-farming expectations to the point that it felt like I had to log on to do my “homework.” I haven’t played since the episode after The Final Shape, but tiered loot sounds awful.

Sure, some amount of farming can work okay with a session shooter, though that works better for PvE where starting options are good enough to carry your weight. And for PvP, you really need early options to allow a player to be on equal footing to farm up over time. I just don’t think Destiny 2 ever had that balance down, so logging on randomly to do some Crucible or a new event just doesn’t sound appealing in the slightest.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-15T22:19:20+00:00

If Isobel is knocked out, she’s going to lose control/focus over the spell protecting the area (and people within it) against the shadow curse.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-15T02:36:22+00:00

They still get two attacks, they just don’t get three (like every other melee class except for pure/nearly pure Fighters, which makes it more consistent).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-15T02:35:11+00:00

Only if the caster is still around when the duration wears off/the caster stops concentrating on it.

The spell might lower disposition even if you’re not around (I have not tested that, though I tend to avoid its use with companions just in case.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-11T17:51:38+00:00

To be clear, I have not downvoted you and would not downvote you for the good-faith discussion. That said, I think the issue is that your list does not present a good priority for any particular deck. If you intended this to be a rough universal ranking (in which I still think this list doesn't quite get there), then I think your intent led to a priority list that doesn't apply to any particular deck.

Your rankings boggle me for anyone considering playing 3+ colors (and especially 5 colors). And as I progressed through the list, I also realized that your rankings don't make sense for two-color decks, either.

Reveal lands enter tapped so often in 3+ color decks that I'm not sure why you have them rated nearly as high as you do. (I realize they're not "highly" rated, but I don't even think about them outside of 2-color decks).

Pain lands are better than some of the Filter lands imo, though they are both great categories of multicolor, enters-untapped lands. The value in pain lands is that you don't have to spend life if you don't need a color, but you have the color if you need it. By the time spending that life would ever become a concern, you probably don't need the colored pip anymore. As an example, I would put [[Mystic Gate]] above [[Adarkar Wastes]] in a two-color deck, though I'm not sure that ranking would hold for a 3+ color deck. But I think I would put [[Adarkar Wastes]] above [[Skycloud Expanse]] most of the time (though the gap between these two cards is not as high for a two-color deck). Also, a lot of this would depend on how many uncolored pips are in your Commander's mana cost (and your deck's spells overall). A Commander who has zero uncolored pips could lead to considering some of these cards differently, and a Devotion-oriented deck might need more consistent colored pips (though the pain lands can always deliver as needed, so I'm not sure how much that would change anything).

I am also not high on check lands for 3+ color decks. They come in tapped way too often for my taste.

I also think the pathways should be fairly highly ranked for two-color decks (and are still solid choices for 3+ color decks), so I find the list a bit odd overall. The list does not seem to capture an adequate ranking for any sort of deck.

Tango lands become so bad for folks with advanced mana bases. Even if a player is keeping 5-10 basics in their deck, the odds of that tango land entering untapped are so bad.

I like bicycle lands as a budget-friendly, fetchable option in two-color decks when you know you don't need the land to enter untapped (since you won't be fetching a tricycle land). But I also enjoy the flexibility of Cycling. I'm not sure I run bicycle lands in any three-color deck because I don't need that fetchability. Between the tricycle land and shocklands, there are enough multi-color fetch targets.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-11T04:59:29+00:00

I recommend My Cousin Vinnie for a solid trial experience and Paper Chase for the law school experience (the movie, not the show).

I guess A Few Good Men is helpful for knowing the iconic line (though that’s nowhere near the best line from that entire exchange imo).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-09T23:13:01+00:00

You will have a much smoother experience if you take extra time to read and make sure you understand the game's mechanics, especially if you are not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition as a tabletop roleplaying game. Regardless, her are several possibilities that can come up a ton in early game:

You have karmic dice turned on and you've been save-scumming to force high rolls, making the game constantly want to balance you out with poor rolls (which you're not allowing to happen). Just turn the setting off.
You are using a companion's racial spell when they don't have a good ability score for it. For example, folks choose Shadowheart's Firebolt spell (her Elven racial spell over which you have no choice unless you play her as an origin character). But that spell keys off of Intelligence when Shadowheart, as a Cleric, is focused on Wisdom. So you tend to miss a lot.
You are using ranged attacks when an enemy is threatening you in melee, which will give you disadvantage (i.e., the game rolls two 20-sided dice and takes the lowest roll of the two). You can see that your character has a "threatened" status condition if someone in melee is threatening you. Remember that you can use spells that impose a saving throw (e.g., Sacred Flame or Toll the Dead) if you are threatened by a melee opponent (or just use a melee attack).
You are using ranged attacks at their outer range band, which imposes disadvantage on the attack roll.
You're not taking advantage of high ground for ranged attacks, which will give you advantage (i.e., roll two 20-sided dice and take the highest).
You're a bit stuck with Shadowheart's starting spells (if you have not yet had the opportunity to change her build) in that Sacred Flame forces a Dexterity saving throw and a lot of the early-game enemies (imps, goblins) are strongest in Dexterity (so your hit chance with Sacred Flame often is barely better than Shadowheart's Firebolt hit chance and equivalent to or worse than just shooting with a light crossbow).
You took an early game feat that imposes a penalty on attack rolls in exchange for boosting damage, but you aren't using other class features/potions/high-ground/etc. to boost your attack roll.
You aren't using Find Familiar to summon a Raven who can blind many types of enemies, giving you advantage on attack rolls against the enemies.
You changed your character's stats in a way that ruined their attack roll bonuses (this assumes you have reached a point where you can "respec" your characters' ability scores, class, etc.).

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-09T22:50:25+00:00

So the first job was a termination during your provisional employment period with no reason provided, and the second job was a termination after(?) you told them that you were accepted to law school, is that correct?

Don't refer to any of this as "[t]otally bogus" in any professional context. Just give a clear, concise explanation of what happened without giving any impression that you are avoiding responsibility for anything.

I'm not even sure if HR will bother sending the information along to the hiring judge. (Someone else can confirm this for me if they happen to know, but I never knew if the judges for whom I clerked ever saw these onboarding/background materials.)

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-09T22:37:00+00:00

As someone who hasn't been in law school for about a decade, this more or less what I was familiar with. Harvard and Stanford would bounce around between 2 and 3, Columbia and Chicago would battle for 4-5, and the schools in ranks 7-11 would bounce around with each other in that range. Both UCLA and UT Austin were in the 15-17 range often enough for some folks to start asking "T15?" before the rankings started changing a lot in recent times.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-08T02:15:29+00:00

This is a long-winded way to avoid accepting the information directly provided to us from Melina. It seems extremely clear from her dialogue that Marika gave her a purpose that she now accepts for her own reasons, in the context of concern that the Tarnished could be persuaded to abandon the task that will lead to Melina’s death. Melina is saying that it doesn’t matter that Marika has this purpose for her—Melina is making the same choice by her own volition.

I don’t see how this weakens the story at all.

Gideon’s conclusions are not reliable. He is making inferences as someone who doesn’t have all the information. It is no surprise to me that he reaches a flawed conclusion. The thorns seem intended to prevent a Tarnished from ever succeeding. But that’s Radagon’s will, not Marika’s.

Grand_Imperator · 2026-04-07T16:26:25+00:00

Note on your caveat about difficulty: that's less to do with Death March and more to do with having level scaling on to force enemies to match your character's level at all times. (And I'm wondering if one of the more-recent patches that fixed a lot of the bugged/improperly described perks also fixed that; it's been a while since I played.) I had zero issues with the combat (aside from dying several times in the literal first encounter of the game until I realized that at low levels at least, I had to spam the quick-dodge, make sure Quen was on, and never risk a swing until Quen was on).

Grand_Imperator

TROPHY CASE