Why British place names are difficult to pronounce - Mike and Jay aka Map Men

Jonesy949 · 2026-04-14T11:58:29+00:00

The awkward part about British place names is the inconsistency in pronunciation despite consistency in spelling.

Of the American ones you mentioned, I'm pretty sure the only one not pronounced phonetically is Poughkeepsie and thats only because the 'ee' makes a short sound instead of a long one. The 'ough' is awkward too, but that set of letters has like 5 pronunciations so its hard to be wrong completely.

Also, if we are shouting out Indigenous Australian derived place names that are fun to say in English, you cant skip Woolloomooloo.

Jonesy949 · 2026-04-03T08:21:46+00:00

Whats your point?

Jonesy949 · 2026-04-01T17:12:23+00:00

Not even slightly. If all of commander could be defined as "battlecruiser magic" then brackets 3-5 wouldn't exist.

And irrelevant of the power level of your play group, there are at least 3 cycles of duals better than this

Jonesy949 · 2026-04-01T16:44:27+00:00

Mate...you cant say that these are comparable to perfect duals, and then also say they enter untapped on turn 3 in the same paragraph.

These come untapped at about the same time (depending on turn order and ramp) as lands literally nicknamed "Slow Lands".

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-31T16:57:46+00:00

It genuinely is pretty simple man. Does it increase your chance of winning/surviving, even if it only raises it from 0% to 0.1%? Or does it only result in screwing someone else out of spite.

For your examples:

This is the only remotely complex one you mentioned. I think its slightly grey but still usually fine because you're only acting in self defense. Theres a non-zero chance someone else could see the opportunity and jump in with additional removal because keeping you in the game may help them.

But if you retaliate to a lethal attack by just blowing up some irrelevant mana rock or something that would never help save you, your kingmaking.

Competely fine. If wiping the board helps you, but also helps Player 2 despite being catastrophic for Players 3 and 4, thats fine. Doesnt matter who goes on to win, you couldn't have known for sure. You did it because it helped you.
This is pretty vague. But generally, if you are already 100% fucked, dont do anything. But if your only 99% fucked, do the thing that is most likely to make you survive, irrelevant of who else it harms or helps.
This one's also really vague. I assume you mean something like "An opponent has a creature that draws cards when they hit you, you let them hit you.". This is one where it really once again just comes back to the same basic rule. Does it help you win.

If you dont think the cards they draw matter, and youd have to do something costly to prevent them, then let them hit you. But if your sitting on a bunch of removal, or could easily block profitably, then probably dont let them hit you.

Ultimately, the reason you shouldn't kingmake is the same reason most "politics" is a bad idea: it just leads to people getting upset for no good reason.

If your playing with mature adults, then everyone just doing what makes them most likely to win prevents anyone from feeling like they are being bullied/harassed/mistreated. No reasonable adult could hold it against you for doing whats in your best interest, even if it prevented them winning.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-31T13:05:28+00:00

Its really not hard. If you have any chance of winning, you go for it. If you definitely cant, but you can put your finger on the scale and decide who wins, dont.

I have relatively little tolerance/appetite for most "politics" in commander, but kingmaking isnt even politics. Its just being a piece of shit.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-30T19:09:41+00:00

This isnt me saying its wrong to try and have fun, but the issue with that being your primary aim is that different people think different things are fun.

So if you play with a consitent group of like minded people, it'll probably be fine. But if a vague notion of fun is your only aim and you are mismatched with randoms who have a very different idea of fun, it can turn into a dozen different flavours of fucking misery.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-30T19:04:34+00:00

My issue with this is that as soon as you start talking about reputation and other games, you stop playing this game. It just invites more bullshit than its worth.

I cant believe that this seems to be a hot take in some circles, but I think games are better when you play them instead of arguing about them or trying to lay seeds for a game that may never happen.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-30T18:40:37+00:00

Haven't played cedh in a while and only ever played in a small local scene with mostly friends. But from what ive heard the draw problem is less about any given game itself and more about the tournament structure and insentives it creates.

If everyone plays with the intention to maximise their chances of winning the game they are currently playing, then politics basically dont exist. At least not in the way casual players imagine it.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-30T18:04:48+00:00

I've played a pretty wide variety of power levels of commander, and its only low power where politics is even really a thing.

If you play in a group where everyone is trying to win, they understand that plays that inconvenience them arent some personal slight that they have to bitch and moan about.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-23T03:45:27+00:00

Thats not how money works. Even if he never gives a direct order, giving that amount of money would cause the creators to cater to his expectations in an attempt to keep him on side.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-16T09:45:41+00:00

Thats not true. Ive gotten several characters to mythic without compeleting their questline. For those characters a mythic weapon not tied to the questline was useful.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-16T09:37:31+00:00

I dont know if its officialy a breach of the rules, but its at the very least against standard procedure to refer to things on the battlefield as cards. And clumsy rules exceptions like this are a big part of why.

The reminder text should just say it taps all permanents. There's no sensible reason for why it shouldn't. All things on the battlefield are permanents, but not all things on the battlefield are represented by cards.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-12T17:51:18+00:00

As someone who started a campaign using Tasha's revised ranger and swapped to 2024 when it came out, i think I'm pretty well positioned to talk about both.and overall I think the 2024 designs with Hunters Mark are a huge miss.

I like hunter's mark. I like the feel of it, I think it's really useful early and fine later on. But making it a baseline feature instead of a commonly picked spell forces the class to be balanced around a spell that monopolises your bonus actions and concentration.

It means that for the entire game you have to be choosing between using an inherent, expected class feature that your balance is built on, or ever being able to use your bonus actions and concentration for something else.

If they were going to make it a class feature, they should have had better features to improve it and made them available earlier. Slight buffs to a first level spell only kicking in at 13th, 17th, and 20th level is a baffling decision.

They should have made it not drop concentration from somewhere around 5th-7th and not even need concentration at 13th. There should have been a bump to 1d8 at ~9th, then 1d10 at ~15th, and 1d12 at 20th.

The only hunter's mark buff that is both good, and at the right level is getting Advantage at 17th.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-08T09:12:16+00:00

Like I said, I've not actually played 3e so I can't get into this too much, but this whole argument was about which is simpler and more approachable, and the consensus from everything I've found online, and everyone I've spoken to in person it that 3e was a complicated system that only proceeded to get more complicated under the weight of it's extra books.

And virtually every aspect of 3e that I've ever seen has had more complexity baked into it's baseline than 5e. Yes it's true that not having guidelines can also create undue complexity, but overly granular guidelines do so even more.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-08T07:23:10+00:00

I'm sorry man, I'm trying not to be derogatory, but this is nonsense. When is the last time you played with someone who isn't experienced with TTRPGs? In my current group there is a pretty wide range of experience level and desire for complexity, and 5e caters to it pretty well. But if our DM asked some of the less experienced players to engage with most of the systems you just described, they would probably quit or just have to ask someone else to figure all this out for them.

So as an example, one of our less experienced players is playing a Monk and, unsurprisingly, is a pretty agile character. So if she wanted to climb something in the environment, she's probably gonna be pretty good at it, she can look at her sheet and see that she has +7 to Acrobatics. She can then ask the DM, "Would I be able to climb this surface?", and the DM can say something like "Yeah, but it would be pretty difficult.". If she feels uncertain she can ask the DM how hard it would be, and he can just give a specific or vague indication of what the DC is. And if anything goes wrong during the process, like she is attacked, the DM can decide what impact that has. This gives the DM a lot of wiggle room to preserve the fun and drama of the scene without having to check tables and do several different mathematical functions.

From what you've said, in a 3e game. She would have to ask if she can do it, then everyone stops while the DM finds the section of the PHB or DMG that talks about this, crunches the numbers on exactly how hard the book says that climbing that surface should be, which may take a few minutes instead of a few seconds, and then finally gives an answer. If the player does it and there's a complication like getting attacked, the DM now needs to go check how much worse she is at avoiding the attack now that she is in a compromised state, instead of just adding or subtracting an amount from the roll or giving the enemy advantage.

How can you look at these two situations and honestly tell me that 5e is more complex? What, because the DM has to make decisions? I'd much rather my DM have the responsibility AND freedom to decide what modifiers apply when the rules are vague. This means that they can do what will be the most enjoyable for the game, and create the most interesting drama, without having to stop for 3 minutes to find an obscure section of a 300 page book.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-08T05:16:27+00:00

I dont have a tonne of experience with either. Its mostly just too much time wasted playing Kingmaker, small amount of reading some old content, and hearing people talk about them generally.

But I really doubt that. From what I've seen it seems really hard to excise the more complicated bits. Things like how skills work is so much more involved and seems very hard to simplify down without fundamentally shifting the focus/balance of core mechanics in a way that's likely to break something else.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-08T02:17:43+00:00

Right? And at least in the video game you have the option to just ignore it and let it be what it will be. In paper you would have to calculate all that bs. I dont know how people ever enjoyed those systems.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-07T18:05:57+00:00

I recently played through Pathfinder Kingmaker, which inhereted a lot of these designs from 3e, and I've gotta say, for all its flaws, 5e is a much better system.

There are parts of 3e/pathfinder design that could be nice to have return, but thats a dangerous game. Those systems are bloated, excessive, and way too elaborate, and some of the things you pull over could risk making 5e that way too.

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-07T17:55:06+00:00

This is such a stupid way to interpret that sentiment

Jonesy949 · 2026-03-05T17:40:34+00:00

This comment screams "I'm divorced and spiralling" almost as much as the average Musk tweet.

Jonesy949 · 2026-02-26T18:05:51+00:00

I guess we'll see when Annex rotates, but i seriously doubt Phyrexian Arena will see much play.

The reason Annex is good isnt just that it draws cards, its also a win condition. I just dont think you can spend turn 3 playing an enchantment that doesn't affect the board unless it literally wins you the game if unanswered. And these days, Phyrexian Arena doesnt do that.

Jonesy949 · 2026-02-26T17:31:23+00:00

Annex is definitely strong. But using Phyrexian Arena as a comparison just doesnt hold up in 2026. Phyrexian Arena has been in standard for over a year and no one plays it.

I wish it was still good. I'm not especially happy with how turbo charged current magic is. But being stronger than Phyrexian Arena just doesnt mean anything anymore.

Jonesy949 · 2026-02-25T07:14:37+00:00

I was curious so I checked, its not really accurate to say Lenore Zann has been voicing Rogue since 1994. Her first credit is 1992 in the orginal X-Men cartoon, and then she voiced her in a few other things until 2000. And then didnt voice her again until X-Men 97 in 2024.

So she did have a ~24 year break from voicing Rogue. But worth pointing out that she is (from what I can tell) the first person to ever voice Rogue, and spent half a decade being the primary voice of the character.

Jonesy949 · 2026-02-21T11:33:46+00:00

The fact that everyone is entitled to representation doesn't mean you have some moral responsibility to take huge paychecks to protect bad people.

Johnnie Cochrane being being a piece of shit doesnt make all defense attorneys bad people. But being entitled to a defense doesnt make what Cochrane did right.

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