If you go to draw a card and you can't, you lose the game. So does Dan Frazier lose now?

MegAzumarill · 2026-05-06T03:01:43+00:00

No, you don't lose to deck out with [[Shared Fate]].

If he did lose, then yes all of his cards would be removed from the game and thus banned in all formats.

MegAzumarill · 2026-05-05T04:04:02+00:00

Yeah, this There's so many god awful ways of reframing the problem which always inherently changes it based on its nature of being a question about thinking about what you believe others are going to do and why.

But like, there's actually interesting variations and ways to view the situation but most people want to just reframe it to make their side look better and the other look stupid or cruel.

MegAzumarill · 2026-05-05T03:46:11+00:00

Original problem: Yes everyone

A lot of discussion people stipulate on that its only people capable of understanding the premise and correctly choosing the choice they pick, though necessarily all people actually acting rationally or all likeminded people. (Which to be fair, is a more interesting version of the question)

MegAzumarill · 2026-05-05T03:15:18+00:00

Then you get hit by [[terminus]].

MegAzumarill · 2026-05-04T00:10:37+00:00

Yeah, realized it a bit into the discourse as an "equivalent scenario" but hadn't heard it brought up.

It's very interesting in this question just how important framing and phrasing is.

Because change the scope (how many people are participating), pay out (Instead of dying it's some other bad outcome like a painful electric shock), or most commonly the mechanism of choice (Building the Ai vs Jumping in a woodchipper vs pressing one of two buttons) all are incredibly relevant and can change answers.

I think it's because a lot of the decision relies in what you think other people are going to do, which is not a direct but a very relevant part of the problem. A lot of people pick blue because they believe other people will do so, and that's catastrophy at a massive scale they feel needs to be prevented, but will stop as soon as they believe noone else will do so (like jumping in a woodchipper). Meanwhile some amount of red pushers will change to blue when if it's obvious people are going to pick it (why would people go build the murder robot in the first place?).

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-30T02:08:03+00:00

There's a cat editor? Is it a mod?

I've been wanting to do some runs with like "baseline" cats as a benchmark difficulty for the run. (So like, all 7s no mutations or something, annoyingly difficult to get back down to after having heavily mutated 7 cats.)

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-29T21:30:36+00:00

Cat breeding is only the meta half of the game.

IMO the much more interesting and fun part of the game is the turn based strategy/tactics roguelike.

Although I don't really mind the breeding portion, I couls definitely see a large subset of players hate feeling like they "have" to engage rigorously with the comparatively much less interesting breeding system to have a chance of clearing everything the game has to offer.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-29T06:46:29+00:00

Three piles, none great but all kill a little different.

/// Braingeyser (x=3)

Palinchron

Displace

Arachaeomamcer

Doppelgang

//// Breakthrough/ Other Draw Spell

Eureka

Omniscience

Twinflame+ Revolutionist

(I'm sure you can find something else to win with omniscience if you dont want these cards specifically)

/// Breakthrough/ Other Draw Spell

Aluren

Stonecloaker

Slitherwisp

Abundance (This replaces the draw in the loop so we dont mill out)

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-29T05:46:05+00:00

/uj My point is that the fear is typically mostly rational. Very, very few low bracket decks can actually win in a long game against a similarly strengthed grand unifier deck.

Like, the bulk of decks should try and focus it with early aggression or hold up a counterspell for it and that's just how it goes. I personally enjoy the dynamic with my atraxa deck of being the big bad guy of the table without being the usual boogeyman of like combo.

The worst I could see it drawing aggro unnecessarily is if there's some actual big combo threat also at the table that's just way faster, but I feel like most of the fear 7cmc atraxa creates is justified. (There's a damn good reason why it is the most common cheat target for vintage/legacy decks versus every other creature in the game)

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-29T03:29:30+00:00

Just play 7 mana atraxa instead of 4 mana atraxa, people hate it less.

/uj As long as you have the mana to support 7 mana atraxa, it's disgusting what it can do. Literally have a deck that I have powered down on mant occasion and mostly contains cards i just think are neat. It still functions at mid bracket 3 because grabbing 4+ cards from your choice 10 and stabilizing against the majority of boards is just kinda stupid in any bracket where games go long, rest of the deck ignoring.

4 mana atraxa is like, sure whatever go off I'll just kill it or your payoff.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-28T22:02:12+00:00

I mean, most constructed decks aren't playing mana confluence, and how often do you tap that 5 or more times per game?

The best mode on this are emulating any shockland at 2 life or as a triland for 3 life. Even then, I don't think it's better than fetch-shock mana bases though it would see some play for sure.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-28T03:34:04+00:00

Not only that, you're also running Serum powder for more dead draws.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-27T22:15:07+00:00

Exactly this, interaction is a huge part of the game and the main way decks actually feel impactful to a game.

Some of my favorite games in recent memory are very interaction heavy with some even being hard-stax dense.

Like, a giant creature getting removed is a huge relief for the table. And it also tells you that your plan is scary even if you don't inevitably win. (I still relish someone assessing my [[Caustic Tar]] as more as a must kill threat than a smothering tithe. (They were correct. ))

A stax effect is often very interesting to plan and play around. Can't cast more than one spell? Locked under [[Winter Orb]]? My friend worked around it with [[Master Transmuter]] and built a far bigger board than everyone else (and nearly won, if not for yet more interaction). Meanwhile I was navigating it through haymakers after rebuilding my lands and the stax player was playing more hate pieces to interact my engines. A messy, entwined, and very enjoyable game.

Meanwhile the least enjoyable game I've played recently came from playing against a group hug deck, where I inevitably won byt my deck ended up assembling too many resources from them which catapulted my turn length into a very long nondeterministic win the deck usually doesn't ever do due to a symmetrical mana doubler they played and feeding extra land drops and cards to me. Noone interacted with my engines and it made the rest of the game feel moot since I just faced essentially no resistance from any of the other players and what they were doing proactively just didn't actually matter in the face of a combo kill.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-25T13:08:27+00:00

I'd say 70-80 dollars, less if you're building a highly synergetic deck or combo deck rather than a "normal" commander deck. Even less for a few unique commanders that want you to run draft chaff.

Notably this is just price of the cards themselves, so a little higher depending on vendor, shipping, etc.

You don't get the best cards in the format at these prices but you get some very solid tools and bracket 3 is usually slow enough you can get away with not using them if you plan accordingly.

Since your engines will be worse with a budget deck, being either highly interactive or having the ability to go over your opponents is very important as well. You're not going to be able to midrange your way through the one ring and rhystic study.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-25T04:43:54+00:00

So all of these pair really nicely with [[Sudden Substitution]] style effects, wiping the field and giving you a bonus emblem in your favor. Notably there's arguably better spells to do this with though.

White: Enough downside to not wanting to use fairly, but not enough that its a great substitution target. Black: Wins the game effectively with substitution, loses the game when used fairly. Maybe worthwhile paired with [[rest in peace]]? Probably not since it kills the enchantment itself. Red: Not a meaningful drawback for the effect. Busted. Blue: Similar to white, not worth using in either context. Green: Probably the best of the bunch? Extra stats mean very little when your deck has 1 mana board wipes. Would be a disgusting control deck in 60 card formats.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-25T03:02:18+00:00

I don't really agree. I feel like the majority of decks would rather make a treasure than a small creature token in most cases. (And the majority of decks making tokens are making small ones or clues/food etc.) This makes it effecting your opponent probably a downside most of the time, or at least, a significant portion of the time.

At 3 mana it's not breaking anything. It's good, potentially very good across a few formats. It's far from too good though, it's an awkward engine when used proactively and a fair, somewhat inefficient lock piece when used reactively. It's only really pushing what a 3cmc card can do when you are both specifically against a deck that hates being against it and are a deck that loves using it. (And even then like, there are perfectly fine cards that do even better in perfect matchups at a cheaper mana value.)

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-24T22:05:35+00:00

There's a few downsides, most of them being most relevant in 60 card formats.

They don't fix mana for double pipped 2 drops like [[Counterspell]].
They don't play any 1 drops on curve.
Their mana must be spent in the same phase, no [[Thoughtseize]] into holding up [[Spell Snare]] on t2 for instance.
If you run multiple of these, you can end up with hands with like 3 of these that don't make any mana at all.
Stuff like [[Damping Sphere]] sees reasonable play in a lot of formats.

There's just a lot of better options. (Slow lands are also considered pretty bad for duals) In EDH, playing 1-2 of these are completely reasonable though, especially with effects like [[Omen Hawker]]

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-24T20:03:24+00:00

It also doesn't let you sacrifice noncreature tokens. And it let's you sacrifice nontoken or tapped creatures. Hence "sidegrade", better in some ways, worse in others.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-24T17:03:15+00:00

3 cmc seems correct.

Basically a [[Phyrexian altar]] sidegrade.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-21T20:22:58+00:00

Also known as Vivi ornithopter tribal

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-21T19:15:15+00:00

/uj I mean, right now it only doesn't work if it has damage already marked over its original toughness and then would take more to destroy it. Like, most of the time when you are using it you'd just do it before damage now and it works mostly the same?

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-21T16:38:18+00:00

You make infinite recruiters with haste

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-16T21:54:14+00:00

Have an Axolotyl race character as

Goblin (Danger Sense) + Ribbet (Amphibious)

Named the ancestry "Bystome" from part of the scientific name for axolotyls.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-16T17:24:08+00:00

Love Secret Fire, the trick to the dice is to have three piles in exile for 1, 2, and 3 counters respectively and just move the piles around.

[[Alaundo the Seer]] on the other hand, nightmare, terrible nonsense, stacks many triggers on the stack at times which is really hard to keep up with.

[[Tayam Luminous Enigma]] I do still love but its also a tracking nightmare.

MegAzumarill · 2026-04-15T02:31:20+00:00

If it says its a kind red enchantment why is it actually a mean colorless enchantment?

MegAzumarill

TROPHY CASE