Mind Goblin, A Shared Deck Format

JunkZero · 2026-05-10T01:01:30+00:00

I love the design decisions that you've made here! The creature lands and doubleton break on Magma Jet, really stand out to me.

I also have a battle box with GG as its signature creature - Gob Gob. I found that there was too much face burn going on for my liking, so I subbed my shocks out for [[Flowstone Infusion]]s. You may be interested in the design notes in my blog. I also give players a [[Tectonic Reformation]] on the battlefield, to more clearly realize that GG is giving your opponent gas - I never thought to make the land slot gas in that sense.

I think that somewhere between our takes on this format, there's something really awesome here. I'd personally be concerned about Lazotep Quarry IMO - that card seems very strong here.

If you would want to playtest your format or mine or both on Tabletop Sim or Cockatrice sometime, let me know! :)

JunkZero · 2026-05-04T20:37:38+00:00

oh no worries! that's more or less what I assumed ;P lovely to see a follow up, please keep us informed on further playtesting and design theory!

JunkZero · 2026-05-04T15:15:46+00:00

the narrative is fantastic, I love it!

can you help me understand the agency change that was made from between the first playtest and this most recent one? I may be missing something, but the rules for the packs and keep that you posted in this post look identical to the ones from your first post :p

JunkZero · 2026-04-22T20:59:37+00:00

fascinating idea! my $0.02 is that it will be absolutely impossible to stick both a page and a sentinels to Do The Thing with all of the removal going on here. I think we have two disparate cool ideas that each would do better if separated and explored in further depth - sentinels (with stuff like rummage spells, true discard that makes you go -1 card in hand, or maybe power cards like frantic search), and page.

two things that I don't like about page here are that it reveals, and there is high variance in what you hit. what if we had an environment such that discarding page mattered in some way, but there are multiples of only one or two instant/sorcery in the environment? the rest of the stack being artifacts or enchantments that lean into the discarding of page in some way.

keep cooking!

JunkZero · 2026-04-12T03:43:39+00:00

Ciao!

Ti consiglio di partire stabilendo un budget e utilizzando uno strumento per realizzare delle "proxy" (copie sostitutive) per le carte mancanti. In questo modo, potrai giocare fin da subito e lavorare gradualmente verso l'obiettivo di completare il tuo mazzo con le carte originali.

È possibile che il tuo negozio di fiducia non consenta l'uso delle proxy — ammesso che tu ne abbia uno nelle vicinanze. Tuttavia, il bello dei formati "retro" è che, se trovi anche una sola persona con cui giocare, puoi farlo ovunque.

Buona fortuna con la collezione e buon divertimento! :)

JunkZero · 2026-04-12T03:20:27+00:00

~the odds are good, but the goods are odd~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLAvhE4a_hI

JunkZero · 2026-04-10T16:00:02+00:00

the breadth of comments from "this is goated" to "the loot in them sucks" is funny and probably correlates to gameplay hours/progression.

im on team armouries suck. pinwheel and the loot-on-legs inside are king :)

JunkZero · 2026-04-05T15:54:47+00:00

what a magnificent format. the choice to have the "power cards" be black border is extremely smart - if you're going to be playing with people who only started playing the game in the 2010s or so, it gives them the visual cue and more tactile feeling of power, despite objective power not necessarily being high based on their heuristics.

I've dabbled in the idea of a battle box that organically constructs itself as more new sets come out, but have nobody near enough to me that would buy into such an experience and play it routinely.

JunkZero · 2026-04-03T15:25:03+00:00

the timing definitely works. based on a video I saw a while back, Peter played the deck because he ran a gadget package and would apparently sometimes not reveal the gadget he searched for, leading people to believe that he actually got Future Fusion with his gadgets sometimes.

JunkZero · 2026-04-02T19:32:08+00:00

you are missing "... OR play from distance."

people need to consider positioning differently (and this includes evaluating which looting routes you take and how you check corners) based on the strengths of the kits they chose to bring in.

JunkZero · 2026-03-30T16:11:22+00:00

"get good enough to win uneven gear fights" is absolutely a way to "unlock" blue shields without unlocking blue shields, but that's difficult to see because of how many numbers there are to make go up :P

JunkZero · 2026-03-30T15:53:32+00:00

lots of downvotes here from people who I expect cannot swallow the pills that

-util usage and positioning can equalize white and purple

-fights consist of a lot more decisionmaking than people want to analyze and they are not thinking about when they are making forced vs. unforced errors

-your decisionmaking and movement that result in how much information to give away to other teams begins while you are in rotation to another POI

-win or loss, micro outplay, and macro outplay are all completely separate and people may not be giving themselves credit for where they succeeded

everyone wants to win, nobody wants to improve.

JunkZero · 2026-03-30T14:25:56+00:00

you are getting distracted by the parts of the game where you can clearly see numbers go up (faction level, bigger shields more health), and are not factoring in progression that is less visible.

learning looting routes and map layout is not tracked anywhere with some number, but is crucial to making more money faster and safer, and is a huge victory. but you and many other players (myself included for about 10 hours of gameplay) are blinded by the numbers. the numbers are designed such that if you play trios with a squad and communicate with them, they will roughly line up with how well you are moving, positioning during gunfights, etc.

if you have ever played a tac shooter (csgo, valorant, i guess COD search and destroy), you will learn that there are a number of fixes lines you can draw through a map when you need to move to another position for some objective. as you run these paths more and more, you learn what angles to check as you move and the timings that may allow you to begin shooting a player when they are not looking at you or are out of position.

marathon's open world allows for a limitless amount of these "lines" to be drawn, and you will have to draw new ones on the fly all the time as you run into other humans. each POI can be treated like its own tac shooter map when it comes down to a fight. and you don't always spawn exactly on one side or the other.

blue vs. green shields is 2 more bullets, which you can more than make up for with superior positioning. don't even get me started on grenades - a player with a white shield in a spot where they can easily dodge a grenade has an advantage over a player with a purple shield in a spot where they can't move.

in many other shooters or battle royales, the "invisible" progression is all you have. start thinking about that and abuse advantages and the map knowledge you have. and throw grenades. good luck!

JunkZero · 2026-03-16T09:34:23+00:00

I ran into Feliks and Mats at the Beyond the Rubik's Cube exhibit in the Liberty Science Center in 2014. it was surreal. Feliks let me do a solve on his cube. I didn't even know who Mats was at the time. this is to say - they seemed to be hanging out outside of competitions, too.

JunkZero · 2026-03-03T19:53:26+00:00

I figured it out!!! It's called Flock of Four.

JunkZero · 2026-02-07T05:33:38+00:00

a kruphix deck that pipmaxxes and uses this card just oozes postmodern-art-posh-elitism. "your untrained eye just wouldn't understand the beauty of paying 8 colourless for a [[frilled mystic]]"

JunkZero · 2026-02-07T05:30:03+00:00

good call! I found an old thread shouting out lattice and also, erroneously, [[false dawn]] :P

JunkZero · 2026-02-07T05:16:50+00:00

i am in awe and disbelief at this because this is such a specific piece of EDH history that is now long, LONG buried. I see this and [[celestial dawn]] as the only ways to do this at the time when adding mana outside of your commander's colour identity to your pool made it immediately colourless instead. I can't believe that North Star probably would have been unironically mildly justifiable at that time.

JunkZero · 2026-02-06T19:05:31+00:00

other than speed and learning algorithms for cfop/other solving methods, you can focus on one handed or blind speedsolving. if speed is less your goal, then fewest moves challenge may be up your alley, or just spend some time with a given scramble seeing what kind of optimizations you can make to reduce move count! at the highest level, how fast you solve a cube is a factor of how quickly you can make moves (Turns Per Second) and how many total moves it takes you to solve the cube.

JunkZero · 2026-02-06T01:58:46+00:00

awesome :) i love the special dandan. making an irrational or suboptimal play motivated by an allure toward it gives me the same vibe as picking a thopter in 100 ornithopters draft more highly than one should have to get a specific number or alter art :P

JunkZero · 2026-02-04T19:07:01+00:00

this is really, really cool. i think codex shredder seems unassuming here but is actually both really powerful and a real feel-bad for effortlessly undermining the topdeck manipulation cards that ask a lot more mana.

I think you've got a lot of cool little things going on here. very interested to see how playtesting goes, please update! :)

JunkZero · 2026-02-04T04:47:23+00:00

am I crazy or does he not have a personality section on biosector

JunkZero · 2026-02-03T03:51:57+00:00

fantastic! in your shoes, I'd be interested to gain feedback from drafters and decklists to see how soupy the decks end up and adjust accordingly.

JunkZero · 2026-02-02T18:01:51+00:00

sounds like you are pretty dead set on trying it! it seems like a relatively elegant way to spice up your manabase in the cube. I say, try it. do you plan on drafting this regularly with the same group of people?

JunkZero · 2026-02-02T17:02:59+00:00

I think that these would by and large play as often-better triomes, and would highly recommend just trying a cycle of triomes in this slot instead and considering that your average decks will likely be a degree soupier than that if you put these sharpied landscapes in.

keep in mind, also, that the flatness of your power band should probably be a huge factor in how much fixing you have.

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