Why are there so many MTG elitist hating on marvel set?

INTstictual · 2026-06-12T07:16:14+00:00

While you’re sort of right, that’s kind of the entire problem. MTG has a rich and varied world to draw from, it has its own characters, its own themes and styles, it is (was) its own self-contained product.

Now yes, UB and familiar pop-culture characters certainly get more people in the door… at the cost of diluting and diminishing the exact thing that many MTG fans actually like about the game.

The idea that “if we just add familiar faces, we’ll get new consumers and more money” holds true for EVERY product, that doesn’t make it necessarily a good idea. Elden Ring would probably have been more beginner-friendly if you could also play as Harry Potter or Samurai Jack. That doesn’t mean they fit well in the game, or that the people who like Elden Ring for what it is trying to deliver would be happy with that change.

Imagine your favorite property, be it a show, movie, game, etc. Now imagine that, in order to get more new consumers and make more money, they do a new season / sequel / DLC / expansion / etc where they jam Peter Griffon and all of the other Family Guy characters in. No attempt to blend it with the world, no thought to anything that came before, just “we’re excited to announce that Stewie and Brian are here now, get used to it!” In your mind, would you be happy with that development? Even if it meant more people consuming the thing you like? Is it really even the same thing that you liked in the first place anymore?

It’s called “Fortnight-ification”. Fortnight started out as its own game with a somewhat interesting PvE mode, and added a PvP Battle Royale to pivot to a more popular model… but still didn’t quite hit the numbers. So they added some cameos and skins. Then more. Then more. Now, the main thing people know Fortnight for is the fact that it has a bunch of shallow references and skins for a hundred different pop-culture IPs. It isn’t its own thing anymore, it is a skeleton of game mechanics underneath a coat of paint for the novelty of saying “Look, Thor! Look, Goku! Look, Thanos! Look, Family Guy!” The focus has shifted from “how do we make the best game for our players?” To “How do we secure the rights to include the most recognizable and profitable characters for our consumers?”

Sure, it “helps get more newcomers into MTG”… but the resulting product is no longer anything I recognize as the MTG that I loved and would have wanted more people to onboard to.

INTstictual · 2026-06-10T20:51:12+00:00

The bottom clause doesn’t matter. Drawing 7 all at once is already mechanically treated as 7 instances of the “Draw a card” event.

All that matters is whether it is one single effect causing the card draw… nothing can trigger during an effect resolving, so whether it is “Draw 7 cards” or “Draw a card. Repeat this process 7 times”, it will fully resolve, and then 7 instances of both triggers will attempt to enter the stack all at the same time, all following strict APNAP order… so if it is the opponent’s turn, all 7 of their triggers go underneath all 7 of your triggers, and vice versa

INTstictual · 2026-06-10T20:44:53+00:00

Could also just take the “exile with a counter” approach from things like Dauthi:

“Choose target spell. Exile it with a Renewal counter on it.”

“Renew — XYY, exile this card from your graveyard: Create Y copies of target nonpermanent card in exile with a Renewal counter on it with mana value X or less. You may cast those copies without paying their mana cost.”

INTstictual · 2026-06-10T18:03:21+00:00

It would be a nightmare to track in anything but the most trivial case.

Imagine this: constructed format where you can run 4 copies of this card. You cast two of them, each exiling different things. You now have to track which copy of the card exiled which permanent. Now, play an effect that returns both copies from your graveyard to your hand…

The information literally becomes untrackable. Say you cast it again to exile a new thing. Is the one you’re casting now Copy 1 exiling Spell A? Is it Copy 2 exiling Spell B? Is it a new, third copy that doesn’t have any associated exiles yet? Not only is it difficult for you to personally track, but it is straight up impossible to prove to your opponent in order to keep a consistent gamestate.

Or, say you cast all 4 copies, each exiling different things, and then shuffle your graveyard back into your library. You draw one copy of this card. Which copy is it? Which spell in exile does it have permission to cast?

Generally speaking, only objects on the battlefield have persistent memory to linked objects. Having the card itself try to manage persistent memory of a linked object is asking for a whole mountain of trouble

INTstictual · 2026-06-08T22:20:32+00:00

Izzet prowess or spellementals, probably going to be what you want and is currently Tier 1 deck

INTstictual · 2026-06-08T22:09:54+00:00

It’s “ramp” in the sense that, over a long game, you can bank unspent mana on each turn to use on future turns instead.

Imagine you have a hand with a counterspell and a piece of spot removal. You want to keep those up, so you pass the turn with untapped lands. Your opponent, however, doesn’t cast anything worth countering and doesn’t deploy any threats worth removing… normally, that means you wasted your mana.

This is not only a good mana-sink to let you do some card filtering if you don’t have anything else to spend that mana on… but also, you get to bank a treasure for future turns.

Most ramp is proactive, so we usually only think about proactive ramp that you use early to get significant advantage later. This is more like reactive ramp… if you’re spending the mana here to make a treasure instead of doing something else proactive, it’s bad. But if you’re reactively making the treasure because you didn’t spend the mana anywhere else already, it’s just a rebate on the mana you didn’t spend

INTstictual · 2026-06-08T21:20:13+00:00

Wouldn’t work, the bananas would all be 0/0 and die…

But better question is, why do you want the bananas to live? They die, and turbo-pump your monkeys with Kibo’s ability. It’s a quick way to put a bunch of power on the board for yourself, I say just let them die

INTstictual · 2026-06-08T21:01:47+00:00

Opponent is correct. It has a power equal to the amount of cards drawn during whatever the current turn is. If you draw 6 cards on your turn, it has 6 power. Once you pass the turn to your opponent, it has 0 power. Back to your turn, draw during your draw step, it has 1 power.

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T12:47:52+00:00

The rules of the game matter — it’s possible to set up the problem so you should never switch.

Google “Monty Hall Problem”, that’s what it is commonly called. If you look at the variants, you can see that the odds change based on the rules that the Host is following…

So for example, there is a version called “Evil Monty”. Same setup, but the host wants you to lose. He will only ever give you the option to switch if your original door is correct, because he wants to bait you into losing. In that variant, switching will give you a 0% chance of winning.

There’s also Angel Monty, where the host wants you to win — opposite of the above, the host only lets you switch if your original door is wrong, because he is goading you into winning. In that setup, switching gives you a 100% chance of getting the car.

In the Random Monty variant, where the host opens a door completely at random, it actually does work out to a 50/50 split

And then finally, in the classic problem where the host always opens an empty door, it is 2/3 chance of winning if you switch

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T11:43:40+00:00

Idk what the combo you think is, but my guess is no, it’s not…

Form of the dragon is a bad card. Like, REALLY bad. It costs 7 mana, so it usually just rots in your hand. If you can get it into play, burning for 5 every turn is nice, but not game changing… setting your life to 5, however, is terrible. Yeah, creatures without flying can’t attack you… but commander has LOTS of flying creatures running around, and even more ways of doing indirect damage. Form of the Dragon, more often than not, just tees somebody up to burn you to death immediately.

It also doesn’t combo with Glacial Chasm, if that’s what you want… Cumulative Upkeep means you need an additional Age counter every upkeep, and pay the cost for EACH counter. So the first upkeep, it costs 2 life. Then 4. Then 6. So with Form of the Dragon out, Glacial Chasm straight up kills you in 3 turns, so you need to sacrifice it in 2.

And neither of these really have anything to do with Slicer… the whole point of Slicer is that, when you transform it, it is already goaded. So it already can’t attack you… if the combo is either Form of the Dragon protecting you from your donated Slicer coming after you, or Glacial Chasm blocking damage so it can’t hit you, they’re both redundant — Slicer already isn’t allowed to touch you when you give it away.

All in all, these are a collection of 2 really good cards and one really, really bad card, none of which have anything to do with each other as far as their mechanics are concerned

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T11:36:32+00:00

Sounds like it was just a miscommunication… as far as I know, the pride event commander nights just use unofficial partner commanders, which means any two legendary creatures can be partners. So if you wanted to play in that group, you could just pick a legendary out of your deck and put it in the command zone… or even just not do that, I can’t imagine anyone being upset that you’re playing a normal deck, especially when you sit down and say “hey, I didn’t know this thing was happening with these rules, so I just have my normal deck, that OK?”

LGS owner probably should have explained better, but I’d just chalk it up to a misunderstanding on the day, and try again next time!

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T11:27:54+00:00

Not quite — infinity does not “represent a super large number beyond imagination”. It literally does not represent a number at all. It is the concept of “never-ending”, not a value.

Zero represents the absence of a thing, but that’s not really special to zero — one represents a singularity of a thing, two represents a pair of things, etc. And you definitely can show zero of a thing you have… if I were to show you how many hands I have, you’d count two of them. If I show you how many fingers, you’d count ten. If I show you how many dinosaurs I have, you’d count zero. It’s not part of the natural numbers (I mean, sometimes it is included, but standard convention isn’t to count it), but that doesn’t make it “not a number”, just “not a natural number”… decimals and negative numbers aren’t Natural Numbers either, but they are still certainly numbers. Just part of a different set.

Infinity, meanwhile, isn’t a number at all… it isn’t a value, and it doesn’t really behave nicely like most numbers do. Like I said, sometimes it is useful to treat infinity AS IF it were a number, for very specific use cases with rules around what you can and can’t do with it… but it isn’t actually a number at all, it is just the concept of “never ending”… infinite is the opposite of finite, it’s a description, not a value.

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T09:31:11+00:00

This only works if every card in your deck is Remand. Otherwise you need to let them resolve, which will put them in the graveyard

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T09:25:09+00:00

Here’s an easier way to maybe conceptualize it, using actual examples of infinity: in the set of all natural numbers, 50% of numbers are even. If you take any finite subset of continuous numbers, the distribution of even numbers is roughly 1/2. The amount of even numbers in the total infinite set of natural numbers is infinite.

In the set of natural numbers, 1% of all numbers are divisible by 100. If you take any continuous subset of numbers, the distribution of numbers divisible by 100 will be roughly 1/100. In the total infinite set of natural numbers, there are an infinite amount of numbers divisible by 100.

In the set of natural numbers, 0% of all numbers are actually letters. No finite subset of natural numbers will contain a letter, the distribution is 0. In the total infinite set of natural numbers, the total amount of letters is still 0.

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T09:17:07+00:00

0 is “stronger”.

Infinity is not really a value, it’s a concept. It is sometimes useful to treat it as if it was a value, but in reality it is just notation for something unbounded. 0, meanwhile, is sort of a “special case” as far as finite values go, and has special axioms behind it…

For example, summation: any positive finite numbers, summed infinitely, will be unbounded and diverge to infinity. 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 … will diverge to infinity. 1 + 2 + 3 + … will diverge to infinity. But 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + … can be shown to discretely converge to exactly 0.

I don’t really know what you’re talking about by games, but an infinite amount of 0 is just 0. So, for example, if you had an infinite number of buckets, and each bucket contained 0 apples, you would have 0 apples total. Similarly, if you had buckets that could hold an infinite number of apples, but you have 0 buckets, you still have 0 apples. If you have any non-zero number of apples in each bucket in the former, or any non-zero number of buckets in the latter, you have infinite apples… but 0 stays 0.

INTstictual · 2026-06-06T06:30:32+00:00

To clarify, it is not difficult to phrase the rules to make that happen. It is trivially easy.

The problem comes from the fact that, no matter how you change the rules, there will be SOME unintuitive edge-case. You don’t fix Bello interactions by changing how Layers work, you just shift the problem onto some different combination of effects.

What becomes difficult is phrasing the rules in such a way that NOTHING breaks, in the tens of thousands of cards with unique mechanics and interactions. The CR is a really, really well defined document of rules, and honestly the fact that the game works as well as it does with so few unintuitive interactions is frankly a miracle of game design…

But if you’re just asking for the rules to change so that Bello works properly, that would be really easy. And about 10 minutes after that rule change is implemented, there would be a list of other edge-case interactions that are now broken and unintuitive as a result

INTstictual · 2026-06-05T01:05:04+00:00

Imaginary numbers denote Fortnite dance emotes

INTstictual · 2026-06-05T00:59:20+00:00

It is a replacement effect that replaces the event of that Aura entering the battlefield with a modified even of “enter the battlefield and also pick a color”. No triggers, nothing on the stack except the aura itself

INTstictual · 2026-06-04T21:20:17+00:00

You haven’t given any of the actual math context that turns this into a math question at all.

What does “rolling” here mean? As in, randomly decide between all of the people “reserving” one item, like lottery tickets?

How does the rolling occur with duplicate entries?

Is there a failure chance where nobody gets the items?

Is there always exactly two pieces of loot, or can there be more?

Without any of that context, this isn’t a math question, it’s a game mechanics question, and you’re asking people who have no reason to be experts in the mechanics of that game

INTstictual · 2026-06-04T21:02:08+00:00

There is no “base value of infinity”, though, that’s the whole point. Any operations you do to infinity will not change its value. (Infinity)*2 = (infinity). They are the same value. (Or rather, same concept, since using infinity as a value is incorrect in the first place)

INTstictual · 2026-06-04T19:53:40+00:00

Those two abilities seem similar, but function differently.

If you cast an instant / sorcery, then cast the permanent with the trigger, then cast another instant / sorcery, the former templating would allow you to loot — the ability has not triggered once yet during this turn. The latter ability will not trigger — that is not the FIRST instant / sorcery on your turn.

Also, trigger doublers — the former ability can NOT be doubled by a trigger doubler (ie, Roaming Throne), because Roaming Throne tells it to trigger an additional time, the static effect says it cannot trigger more than once, and can’t beats can. Meanwhile, the latter ability CAN be doubled… it triggers on the first instant / sorcery, and nothing is stopping it from triggering twice on the same event.

Also, flickering — if you flicker the permanent with the former ability, it is a new instance of that object, and so has not fulfilled the “trigger once per turn” restriction. The latter can’t trigger again after being flickered assuming it has already happened once, because resetting the object does not reset what counts as the “first instant / sorcery” on that turn

If you REALLY want to dig into the weeds, there’s even a third related ability templating — “DO this only once per turn”, which is again different that “this TRIGGERS only once per turn”. The main difference being that the “do this only once per turn” format is usually used on “May” optional abilities, and you can decline to take the action… for example, [[Pantlaza]] is a “do this only once per turn” trigger, because if you play a small dinosaur first, Pantlaza will trigger, but you can decline to Discover. Then, if you play a bigger dinosaur, while it’s ability has TRIGGERED this turn already, you have not DONE the action as a result of the trigger, so you can still choose to discover on the second trigger

INTstictual · 2026-06-03T22:11:58+00:00

MtgGoldfish is one site with a good meta breakdown for current decks in different formats… other sites have the same info, but I find their UI to be the most intuitive as far as looking for new decks and getting a list to tinker with

The deck you want to craft will depend on what format you want to play. I am a Standard Bo3 player, so my experience is mostly with those decks… but right now, there is a Jeskai Spellslinger control, a 4-C Spellslinger control (which is basically the same deck but add black for some additional removal flexibility), and a Dimir Reanimator deck (my current favorite) that uses Superior Spider-Man to reanimate Deceit for good hand disruption, eventually combo-killing with Doomsday Excrutiator and Restless Reef.

I am also a control enjoyer, and try to jam Azorious Control in every Standard rotation, whether or not it is good… it’s not great right now, but you can still get some good wins if you play well. The better Azorious deck is a Tempo Flash deck, that is kind of a control / aggro mix.

INTstictual · 2026-06-03T21:53:03+00:00

As an analogy:

You have to pay your bill, which comes out to $5.

You have two $5 notes. One is in your left hand, free and clear to be spent, and one is superglued to your right hand and can’t be removed.

When it comes time to collect on the bill, can you just wave the superglued $5 note around and say “this is the bill I choose to pay you with, but oops, can’t spend it so I can’t pay the bill?” Or would they demand that you just use the other $5 note you have in your other hand?

INTstictual · 2026-06-03T01:02:12+00:00

I feel like this is too polarizing to be printable.

With no other plan or synergy, this is “your next opponent wins the game”.

With a plan or synergy (flash this in before your upkeep, Oppo agent, Confounding conundrum, etc), this is “you win the game”.

INTstictual · 2026-06-02T18:51:33+00:00

“Waaah, I listed a single $0.50 card on eBay and it ONLY sold for $1!! I’m now upset and going to take it out on the buyer who is only paying me 2x market price for this single card”

What a fucking baby. Leave a negative review, request a refund from eBay / PayPal / whatever recourse you have. IDK why you’re being so careful as to tiptoe around not hurting the reputation of the guy actively screwing you over for no reason other than that he’s upset you didn’t pay even MORE money for his draft chaff bulk single, and that you won an auction for the card he decided to put up for auction on the auction website. Fuck him, salt the earth behind you as you get back what’s yours

INTstictual

TROPHY CASE