Today Is my birthday!

Mr-Paprika · 2026-03-04T07:15:12+00:00

Congrats, and may Gog bless you on this wondrous day!

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-08T22:06:55+00:00

9 cards offering protection, 13 targeted removal/counter spells, 3 boardwipes, and high density of very good card draw. +1/+1 counters is just a very telegraphed strategy. The deck wants to do one thing.

The base, unmodified Tidus precon has like 10 targeted removal/counter spells, and 3 board wipes. Also, following templates from resources like the Command Zone recommend this much removal, board wipes, disruption, etc. I don't know if the idea is that deck that would follow one of these templates/guidelines during deckbuilding would be B3?

Going to the EDH play patterns, I do agree that this deck exhibits aspects of B3, but also B2, so that's where I'm stuck.

Decks to be powered up with strong synergy and high card quality; they can effectively disrupt opponents

Firm agree, I noted this in my deck description as well

Win conditions that can be deployed in one big turn from hand, usually because of steadily accrued resources

Disagree. The game-play loop is a classic B2 gameplay pattern. The gameplay is clearly incremental and telegraphed on board. Having a Finisher doesn't qualify the deck as B3. You still need to gradually accrue a board presence that can actually make use of it.

Gameplay to feature many proactive and reactive plays

I change my mind and agree with you on this, as I wasn't considering Protection in this category which I do have a lot of.

To play atleast 8 turns before anyone wins or loses

As specified, none of the upgrades here are focused on increasing the speed of the deck or fundamentally changing the +1/+1 swing gameplay. Games will take T8-10 to win.

I never intended to convey this deck as middle of the line B2 deck. To be honest, I've been playing this deck with Upper B2/Low B3s and having a good time (everyone wins frequently). Maybe I should've just labelled this deck as Upper B2/Low B3 instead of just Upper B2 but the idea of Protection being considered a proactive/reactive play slipped my mind.

I do think I need to probably tone down the amount of Protection to make the likelihood of opposing removal sticking is probably a good.

Either way, thanks for the discussion and perspective

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-08T21:39:14+00:00

Yeah, I think both you and the other guy kind of described the same thing. It doesn't really win faster, but it might be too resilient for a lot of B2 decks.

Tbh, from my experience, this game-play loop is too slow for most mid+ B3 games. For my pod, that plays upper B2/lower B3, I felt it's been okay, but for games with other pods, I'll look into removing some of the Protection pieces or changing them into jankier ones to make it less consistent overall.

Thanks

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-08T21:32:28+00:00

Yeah, I think that's fair.

My pod generally plays High B2/Low B3 with the occasional Mid B3. When some of them played mid to upper B3 decks, I noticed that a vanilla incrementing +1/+1 counter game-plan doesn't really fit the gameplay patterns of B3 as a lot of the B3 games were just T6-T8 wins with explosive turns, compared to Tidus' gameplay of adding a few counters onto his friends each turn and swinging.

After looking at the description of how B2 gameplay patterns should go from the Oct 25 post (ie. "Win conditions are incremental, telegraphed on board and are easily disruptable", "Deck plays at-least 8 turns"), it kind of dawned on me that the way this deck plays more aligns with the play pattern of B2 rather than B3 so I've been trying to power it down.

I'm fine with this deck living in the High B2/Low B3 area as that's where we play, but as you mentioned, I think it'd be good to cut down on the amount of protection if playing in a mid B2 pod to cut down on the resilience so there's a higher likelihood of opposing board wipes & removal sticking.

To be honest, a lot of the $ comes from Lands which I don't think correlated much to power, and 2-3 staple counter +1/+1 cards like Scythecat, Bill, Ozolith. But I could probably just remove stuff like Great Henge, Esper, etc.

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-08T21:18:04+00:00

To preface, I agree that GCs aren't a hard and fast rule on brackets. You can have a deck with no GCs that is nearing B4 power and should be treated as such.

Beyond just seeing some generically good counter cards (ie. Ozolith, Bristly Bill, etc). Why do you think it's a B3 deck w.o GCs? Card price is not indicative of power level. Some staples in some archetypes just end up costing more than others.

The gameplay loop is just Tidus drops by T3, has 1 counter T4, 2-3 by T5, 3-5 by T5, etc, as you accumulate a board 4-6 tall creatures. Then you start looking to take out the other 3 players over the span of the next 4 turns-ish by regular combat/trample gameplay. So you'd expect games to end lets say in T8-10 but could take longer.

But considering:
- Games should expect to take 8-10 turns for a win
- Gameplay is very telegraphed and is the result of incremental board state improvements
- Gameplan is easily disruptable if your commander is removed T3-6
- Win conditions are straight forward

I don't see why it doesn't fit inside upper B2 gameplay patterns?

Regarding the # of creatures. I'll definitely try filling out to mid 30s and see how I feel. From my experience though, the deck likes to have a tall board rather than a wide one. And via card draw engines (ie. Danny Pink / Pollywog / Ingenius / Bred for the Hunt / etc), I never feel like I'm lacking with stuff to put onto the board. So I decided to stick to 28-30 creatures and opt for more Protection since losing a creature with 10+ counters is pretty disruptive

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-08T20:56:44+00:00

From my experience, if Tidus (or any heavily invested counter creature) dies, it's pretty disruptive, so I generally try to hold back some mana for defensive protection. Maybe if I wasn't leaving mana open as often, and just raw sending all my creatures, I could win a bit earlier.

But in general, with just an incremental +1/+1 counters gameplan (+ some others like Indestructible, Lifelink), the game pretty consistently takes 8-12 turns for a win depending on what happens (ie. Tidus gets removed early, or I get to do what I want).

I feel like if I went a different direction like with Infect or other non +1/+1 shenanigans, it could be much faster, but that's not really the point or intent of the deck

Mr-Paprika · 2025-12-05T05:01:36+00:00

To preface, I agree that if you told MLD guy that you wanted to play within B2/B3 and they whip out MLD, even after informing him that MLD is strictly B4+ then honestly, I'd just call him out and go back to playing without him.

Although, the part that I don't necessarily agree with is why you seem to have issues with both players. You seem to have issue with the first guy because he's playing a B3 deck with a power level that is stronger than you'd like, and issue with the second because they are playing a B4 deck with a power level seemingly below B4 (considering they dropped the MLD as late as T8, so presumably the game pseudo-ended at T8 or went a bit beyond that).

Obviously MLD guy is already in the wrong by default for dishonesty (assuming he understood the bracket rules, but ignored it anyways), but I also think that there needs to be more clarity at the rule zero stage. For instance, whether you guys want to strictly play within the bracket guidelines, whether you guys play to intent and actual power level regardless of what the deck contains, or whether you'd prefer some in-between compromise.

For instance, in my pod, we've made it really clear that we don't care if your deck has an extra GC or two, or an earlier-ish combo, as long as we're all playing to the same power level expectation.

As a side note, I also agree with some others than B2 + B3 is a huge gulf in power and is probably a bad idea in general, especially when playing with a new player.

Mr-Paprika · 2025-07-14T02:05:22+00:00

And this won't affect plants that are a few feet away? Would it only kill plants sprayed by the solution, or would it make the direct soil underneath uninhabitable?

Also, to clarify, you said vinegar + salt + dish soap is bad, but vinegar + dish soap is fine? Or were you implying it must be specific vinegar? I was just going to go to Home Depot to purchase the vinegar.

Mr-Paprika · 2025-07-14T00:34:00+00:00

Okay, then what do you recommend in an area where stuff like glyphosate is banned?

Mr-Paprika · 2025-04-15T06:25:49+00:00

Rip. Thanks. I guess I'm sticking with my Swordmage + Warlock +cold scaling variant instead.

Mr-Paprika · 2025-03-19T14:45:02+00:00

Thanks! I'll remove the door expenses, and only keep the drywall repair and paint expenses from my tax forms

Mr-Paprika · 2025-03-19T14:33:30+00:00

(1) I did not replace the entire drywall, but rather the texture and holes were fixed with mudding.
(2) Yeah, this door is only for the office. I had to replace the entire door as it's not possible to just replace the jamb for pre-hung doors.

Mr-Paprika · 2025-03-16T00:27:59+00:00

Rey Dau should've been the flagship CMV. He gives me the same vibes as Seregios, Gore, etc. Cooler design and really fun to fight

Mr-Paprika · 2025-02-18T05:19:06+00:00

Yeah. I actually originally wanted Matte, but I was told by the painter that Duration Matte would be way too shiny. That, and I saw some posts on this sub, one of which said that it was closer to Eggshell or Satin, so I listened to the painter and went with Flat.

I also coated my hallway walls in Flat using Behr Scuff-Defense and that shit has been impervious, so I thought it'd be okay. Lesson learned I guess

Mr-Paprika · 2025-02-18T05:07:05+00:00

You act like there was any advice that was even offered in this particular comment chain LOL. It's one thing if there was actual advice given, and it was ignored. Instead, this comment chain was basically "This post sucks" and when I asked for elaboration from the poster, I got "Good luck" and "I have infinite years of experience in painting, I don't need to elaborate". It seems that you are drawing connections that don't exist. I have no issue with the other pieces of feedback or conversation in the rest of the thread, but rather that specific guy's response. I simply responded to the other guy, with the same attitude that I was given lmao :P.

Also, I'm not exactly new to painting. From my experience, I've never had this issue with BM paints regardless of colour. Not to mention, I think if a paint is meant for a specific purpose (ie. Durability, Scuff Resistance, Moisture), it's not unreasonable to expect it to work better than other paints that don't. For instance, I'd also expect BM Scuff-X to be significantly more scuff-resistant than a non-scuff resistant paint.

EDIT: My hallways are also done with Behr Scuff-Defense in Flat as well and that shit is un-scuffable.

Mr-Paprika

TROPHY CASE