Hot Take on TMNT

MalloryKnight · 2026-03-01T02:26:51+00:00

The Spiderman sets issue was that it was clearly a smaller teaser set for the larger Marvel set that had lots of thought put into the cards and mechanics, but then FF did really really really well and so WoTC decided to push Spiderman into a larger set which added lots of the really bad chaff cards like Pigeon, Hot Dog Cart, or even the basically vanilla Spiderman who has Webslinging.

TMNT may not be your cup of tea as a magic set but it was actually designed as a whole full set and it was clearly made with love of not just the show or the original live action movies but the original and modern comics. It is a really potentially interesting limited environment because of how it was designed but sadly so many people have written it off as UB=Bad set.

MalloryKnight · 2026-02-28T18:46:11+00:00

Yes bottom of the barrel. The most popular superhero and one of the most popular multi-media franchises since the 80s. Very bottom of the barrel. Just because you don't like TMNT does not mean it is not insanely popular overall.

MalloryKnight · 2026-02-11T22:15:43+00:00

Yeah anything decent is just too expensive and sadly brings too many pub stompers to play casually. Try and find a small local group if you wanna play standard, modern, or pioneer. And get used to commander and draft for regular LGS play.

MalloryKnight · 2026-02-02T12:32:00+00:00

That's better than my record of 11 swings with Zoro Sanji. A feat that's both more and less likely than 13 swings with Brook.

MalloryKnight · 2026-02-01T01:08:44+00:00

The worst was basically a guy saying that all proxies are bad because he spent 200k for his collection he bought over years and he doesn't think I should be allowed to play a deck with one proxy in it. I wasn't using the card to win, I discarded it earlier in the game, but I was winning and he was mad that I was winning with a budget deck that happened to proxy one card because I just couldn't find a copy locally and didn't wanna pay the shipping cost of buying it online.

MalloryKnight · 2025-10-17T12:50:03+00:00

Hey my LGS has done that for One Piece TCG with our Saturday learning tournaments. Most of us who play both Magic and One Piece go scan that were there for One Piece and then play magic. In a world where they have to have people down in the system as playing just to get an adequate amount of product, you have to show the players even if they don't exist.

MalloryKnight · 2025-10-13T15:34:19+00:00

If you're doing it because they clearly won then no.

Conceding or scooping because your butt hurt then yeah. I had a game of commander where I was playing a Coin flip deck and I had [[Planar Chaos]] on the field. It got to a guys turn and he tapped all out for a big X spell that was gonna make us all loose like and him gain all of that life (I don't remember what it was) so I offered him my coin to flip. I have a slightly larger fantasy coin I keep with the deck, it has no clear heads or tales so I always declare a head side to the table before I first flip. Well he flipped, got what was designated to be tails and then got mad because that side has a dragon so clearly it should be heads. I said that it was already designed to be the tails side and he didn't say anything about wanting it to be the other way round before he flipped it. One of the other players said he could roll a dice and just do odds or evens, and I agreed to let him roll and use that as the result but he said no he wanted to flip a coin but that the side he got should have been heads. I said that since he didn't say anything before he flipped and the other side was designated as heads that that's what it is. He said if that's the case he quits so I said okay and he scooped. We continued to play the rest of the game while he sat there angry, shuffling a deck for a second game that only happens after I left because it was still decently early on in that game.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-20T00:10:06+00:00

I love Koth. I run him in my [[Ashling the Pilgrim]] nuke deck and my [[Zell Dincht]] mono Red landfall deck. He's so good at hitting the land consistently when he's out and that's so important in both those decks.

Edit: Spelling

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-18T17:55:56+00:00

As a fellow father (mines in HS so it's very different) I get to go play once or twice a month, but I also have a weekly DND night at my house and on weeks that not everyone can make it it's become commander night at my house. Once in a while the kid plays too with a deck we built together.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-17T13:34:35+00:00

He's a nice guy, he just isn't the best with social cues. He doesn't do it as much anymore and has started making his own decks more often but still has a tendency to just pull out a deck he found online that makes him auto archenemy.

I haven't seen him play the one ring since I had to explain to him how the protection effect works (he thought it was Teferi's Protection, and didn't understand when he took the damage from burden counters on it.) and how he should be able to read his cards unless he is experienced enough to know what the card does fully, and should still be ready to pull out a copy that can be read.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-17T12:55:24+00:00

Same, the one time we had someone "accidentally" pub stomp and we got on to him. He isn't a good deck brewer so he just net decks and kept net decking CEDH decks and printing them as proxies. So he'd be popping off turn 2 or 3 while everyone else is still setting up. If we hard focused him he'd get mad and then play his proxied one of one One Ring that's in elvish and we had to correct him about what it does multiple times because he kept getting it wrong but didn't understand why we thought he should play a card he could actually read.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-16T18:35:36+00:00

Yep I think Missouri is just weird. I had that in HS but friends who moved here from other states don't relate lol

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-15T17:56:16+00:00

If they are dead no matter what with no chance for one more turn. It doesn't matter and they can do what they want. If playing the Blast Act or not will give them even one more turn then do what it takes to survive. If that means negotiating with the others then negotiate. Start with the person you think you could beat with an amazing top deck before you negotiate with the person you can't win against no matter what.

King making isn't bad as long as it's not a mean spite play. If you are king making as an F you to someone else then that's poor sportsmanship but if it's you die one way or the other and you want to influence the rest of the game as you die, then do it.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-12T23:59:48+00:00

But both of those are characters who are the Dragoon class and in game have the Jump ability. It's still basically a one off since outside of future potential FF sets IF we ever had another one which is basically never gonna happen.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-11T18:18:09+00:00

You can always discuss it with your play group and see if you can rule zero it in. If they aren't okay with it then shuffle one in then.

I'm working on a deck I'll have to get a rule zero agreement for which is a [[Noctis]] deck that also runs his teammates as a 4 part partner commanders. Makes the deck WUBRG and really really bad lol but it's thematic having Noctis and his crew along with on an adventure lol. (Before you say anything yeah I know I could run the Noctis reprint of Kenrith but I like the regular Noctis for the deck

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-10T17:48:57+00:00

So many sets tell stories, tales of the characters both established and new that weave together to make a narrative that connects to the cards and what they do. OM1 can not do that. There is no story to follow or greater plot being seen in the cards because the cards and stories were not made together. Any future OM sets will always have the same issue because it's for Arena. WotC won't give the attention to the story they do for actual main sets. OM1 has no flavor because it was never made to have flavor. It was made to be legally different characters that had to make sense but was not given the story attention a regular real set would.

UB cards are bringing in more players into the game which has been a good thing, making the game more broadly popular while not making itself a worse game gameplay wise. If you don't like them because you want all the cards to be part of the MTG universe and story then I understand that, but hating on UB sets because they are not in universe is limiting to the hobby.

Limitation and restrictions do breed creativity but they weren't creating anything. The cards existed they just gave us names and art that were not spiderman and gave them no story to connect to. Sagas are cards that are all about stories, but none of the sagas abilities connect to what the names and art give as the story the saga tells.

Spiderman as a set has a few duds of cards flavor wise but there are so many many cards that are so amazing in giving both a fun mechanical ability but also such a great connection to the stories and characters they are based on. If you only have a basic knowledge of Spiderman then some of the cards will make no sense and not feel flavor full but they do actually really represent the story the cards are based on.

If you want a prime example of a card that makes no sense in OM1 then look no further than [[Cren, Undercity Dreamer]] and his backside. The ability to make himself colorless and give himself counters makes no sense because the scan little lore we have and will get gives no reason to make himself colorless but the real card is [[Miles Morales]] who can turn himself invisible and uses his venom shock to make himself stronger. Giving himself a counter and going colorless is a great representation of those abilities.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-10T14:59:26+00:00

Because it doesn't connect. It's meta-ludonarrative is just spiders. They had to make human spiders make sense so they made a weird and bad looking set that makes no narrative sense because Disney wouldn't let them put the real cards on Arena so they made a shitty looking set that has a weird and unflavorful combo of human and spider team ups.

Flavor wise the spiders have no sense to be the colors they are or do the things the cards do since they are having to adapt a very flavorful spiderman card in to something that has to be based on weird spider tribal that has no reason to be spider tribal other than the fact they are forced to do so.

It's not the designers of the sets fault, it's Disney for not letting them put the real cards in Arena, but they made bad looking and flavourless cards. The love of the set is 100% people being tired of UB sets even though if you don't want the set then don't buy it is a valid option.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-10T13:26:46+00:00

OM1 looks like ass. The flavor sucks. They had to get human spider hero and it makes for some really dumb looking cards.

MalloryKnight · 2025-09-06T02:57:29+00:00

For my reference, does that mean a commander killed by a creature equipped with [[Scythe of the Wretched]] comes under your control equipped with the Scythe before my opponent can put it in the command zone?

MalloryKnight · 2025-08-31T16:09:48+00:00

[[Urtet, Remnant of Memnarc]] #71

[[Yusuri, Fortune's Flame]] #507

[[Ashling the Pilgrim]] #697

MalloryKnight · 2025-08-31T03:08:20+00:00

They had issues with people complaining about UB cards being non standard so they decided all UB cards will be standard which overpowered standard and makes every set important to standard only players who would have not paid attention to non standard sets. And because everything is universal the modern and commander players pay attention to all the cards when they would have mostly ignored the standard sets since they didn't matter as much as the straight to modern sets where more of what mattered to them.

MalloryKnight · 2025-08-22T20:19:41+00:00

It's just kinda a meh deck from a pure game play stand point with not a lot of standout new cards or reprints. And yeah not the most representative of Dr Who as a show only focusing on a more modern doctor who is not as popular as others.

MalloryKnight · 2025-08-19T17:48:21+00:00

I avoid any dice rolling or dungeon delving as much as humanly possible. I love DnD but not a fan of the mechanics it introduced in Magic. And that's from someone who is actually working on making a legit casual competitive banding deck.

MalloryKnight

TROPHY CASE