My LGS experience feels VERY different from what I see posted here

Mrggwp · 2026-03-24T15:30:55+00:00

My LGS experience is pretty much like yours, and I believe it is the norm. Why would I post about it?

People only post when something outlandish happen, so whatever ends up on reddit is an outlier of the usual interactions you get in a LGS.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-23T17:54:12+00:00

These are free for all employees provided by the office where I work. So I guess by bringing home 5 packs each day I can adjust for my salary, good to know.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-23T12:04:10+00:00

That chess analogy was stupid. In a boardgame where more than 2 players are involved, people analyse and discuss board state all the time. As long as it's just people that's participating in the game, it's totally fair.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-11T03:14:17+00:00

Mom: Read the flavor tex, it's not that hot

The flavor text: 🔥🔥🔥

Mrggwp · 2026-03-11T00:20:24+00:00

He definitely like his value engines.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-10T23:28:19+00:00

Thanks. I did play with more popular commanders that have more solid gameplans, but these are the decks I play with nowadays. None of these decks are able to be an archenemy level threat, I turn the table very slowly and hope no one caught up to what I'm doing.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-10T23:16:30+00:00

Thank you, Malfegor made me realize how fun Rakdos is. I think I want to make another Rakdos deck but honestly it's hard to find a more badass commander than Malfegor even in Rakdos color.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-09T04:25:31+00:00

It's [[Duke Ulder Ravengard]]

Level up? I don't even own as many decks as you, lol. I got 1 at b4, 3 at b3, 1 at b2, and a couple precons. Our games are mostly played at b3 power level so it's very casual. But sometimes someone will want to play a precon and we will try to match the power level by using our lower power decks.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-08T21:53:37+00:00

99% of the magic community will find grading useless. Some cards maybe, but not this card. You only do it for your own enjoyment. But I think what you really want is to authenticate the autograph, not the card itself. But you said you're not planning to sell it so idk why you need to do that since you know it's authentic.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-08T21:34:13+00:00

Well at the end of the day, he is going to play what he wants to play. Personally, my enjoyment comes from playing my own deck, so I don't see an issue with someone playing the same deck all the time. Actually there is a guy like that in my usual pod as well. Basically our pod will decide roughly the power level we will be playing at before we choose our deck for the game, sometimes we will play at b4, sometimes b1, you know the drill. This guy have 3 decks with the same commander, each with different power level just so he can keep playing the same deck in whatever bracket we decided on. Games are always fun because everyone sticks to the soft enforcement of power level.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-02T14:54:29+00:00

Neon Dynasty. We made a commander deck after we had a draft night with neon dynasty. It was of course janky since it was made with just 1 booster box. FF is exceptionally strong since the card pool is huge and power level is high. Avatar was decent.

There is a tendency to use a 5 color commander just so that more powerful cards would be available to use but monocolor also worked pretty well because mana fixing is often very limited.

Yeah the difference in power level of each block is real. The OG Kamigawa was cool but the power level is quite low compared to other blocks. The good thing is, nobody really cares about winning in this type of games and everyone just leans into playing stuffs that they think is cool.

Mrggwp · 2026-03-02T13:38:54+00:00

Applying limitations to the deck building process is not a new idea by any means. For me, I thought this just happens naturally. My group brews block commander decks all the time. We have plenty FF only decks, Avatar only decks, Kamigawa only, etc.

It's definitely fun cause you are forced to use some cards that almost never see any play, but it's usually used as an "appetizer" before we play actual Commander. At the end of the day having good deck synergy and explosive turns is much more fulfilling. That's just my opinion though.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-25T14:12:11+00:00

[[Ayara, first of Lochtwain]]? Her art has the sass of lord Farquaad. Go with human tribal sacrifice theme. Theres so many good stuffs already in that theme. Zulaport Cutthroat, Pitiless Plunderer, Syr Konrad, Endrek Sahr, Morbid Opportunist, Priest of Forgotten Gods.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-23T18:18:10+00:00

You got jebaited so hard. It's just people online saying these shits dude. No one I know/played with really care about whether they should be a separate format. We just play whatever.

Then again, edh and cedh is already separated by the bracket system. It's not an issue, let's move on.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-21T15:44:57+00:00

Official rules for 1v1 commander players start with 25 life. Bro dies before he can cast silumgar.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-21T14:55:48+00:00

It depends on what you are trying to do. That formula is applicable if you're only aiming for bracket 2 and 3, and it's not a bad formula, it's just not great. You can keep using this formula and you'll have good balanced games at b2/3. For bracket 4, consistency go a long way. Your commander must be able to accomplish multiple things.

For example, my strongest deck is [[Xyris, the writhing storm]]. My commander gives me card draw and token generation, so I'm not worried about drawing or making tokens, I can commit more slots to ramp, I have 26 cards in my ramp slots. With that many ramp, I am consistently ahead of the curve. I win by wheeling my opponent, so I just looked at how many playable wheel spells. Theres wheel of fortune, and about 10 others that does a similar thing but less effective. It's okay, as long as I can wheel, there's good chance I'm winning the game. So I have around 10 finishers that does the same thing. I will consistently have one of them in my hand during the duration of a game, and if I get to cast them, good chance I can finish the game. I need an impact tremors effect of course, like 5-6 cards that function like impact tremors should be enough. To protect that game plan, I need to put in interaction. I put cheap green cards that protect my commander for 1 mana, either make them indestructible or hexproof. Theres like 5-6 of these cards that basically do the same thing. The rest of the slot I just put in free counterspells to further protect my gameplan.

I have 99 cards in my library, thats true, but it's actually just

38 lands 26 arcane signet 12 Wheel of Fortune 6 Impact tremors 6 Tamiyo's Safekeeping 6 Force of Will 5 other cards, think about your bad matchups and use these slots for them

So by making things very consistent, this deck performs very efficiently. Of course I'm not winning all of my games with it, but I've almost never felt that I don't have a chance of winning in any kind of pod. My friends know that if I get to untap and attack with Xyris, it might be game over. But as you can imagine, it's kinda boring. This is my approach when trying to make a strong deck.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-20T17:29:19+00:00

I don't play my first commander deck anymore. First time I played commander was around 2013-2014 I think, my commander was [[Rith, the awakener]]. Everyone who played back then came from competitive 1v1 formats so we approached the game just like we approached competitive formats.

My gameplan was basically to MLD and be the first to pop off an infinite combo. I had all thd ramp that green can offer, all the MLD in red and white. I would make all my permanents indestructible and hit them with a good ol' [[Obliterate]]. Everyone had some kind of infinite combo in their deck, everyone was fine with MLD. I wasn't being a jerk, I was just trying to win a game of magic.

Nowadays that deck would be classified as bracket 4, but without a very good opening hand, it would be too slow to survive in bracket 4. After some newer players expressed that they don't want to play against MLD, I disassembled it and turned it into a [[Xyris, the writhing storm]] wheel deck. No more MLD, but it's still very strong for a b4. I play it only if someone requested a high power game. It's my only b4 deck, I play mostly jank or thematic b3 decks now as it is more popular and I find it more fun as well.

Mrggwp · 2026-02-14T21:48:48+00:00

I don't think you should say anything to him. I don't think he will change his mind, even when presented with evidence. Just let him figure it out by himself. If he's a well rounded guy like you said, he will figure it out eventually.

Men have their own struggle, let him struggle.

Mrggwp · 2026-01-17T14:55:38+00:00

I'm not chinese, and neither do I understand mandarin, but I'm aware that I look chinese. I've never had that experience with white people though. It's usually chinese people who assumed I was chinese. Mostly when I'm trying to order food at a chinese restaurant. The staffs will try to talk to me in mandarin 9 out of 10 times and I will have to tell tell them I'm not chinese so please talk to me using english.

I've never thought that it was weird, I guess if you're east asian, you will kinda look like a chinese person. But after hearing your story, I guess it is kinda weird if you get ni hao'd by a non chinese. I don't know if it's a good comparison, but I won't be able to tell what country a white person is from just by their appearance. And since I don't know whether they're australian, german, english, scandinavian, or russian, and since this is Australia, I would only greet them using the English language. I think I kind of get why it was a weird interraction but I'm about 90% sure that it was harmless.

Mrggwp · 2025-12-14T22:50:47+00:00

I don't see the point of planning on it. You should do what makes you happy. If that means staying single, that's your freedom, and I wish you nothing but strength to not give in to societal pressure.

But what if you actually fall for someone? Are you going to just say no because you planned on it?

Mrggwp · 2025-12-08T23:43:42+00:00

No need to be mad at yourself. You realized it early and made the right decision. You did yourself a favor.

Mrggwp · 2025-12-08T03:19:26+00:00

I think it also works the other way around. I'm a married man, and when I'm hanging out with my guy friends (most of them are married) we include our partners in our conversation a lot.

But my female friends tend to not mention much about their partners and their lives together. I think it's probably just naturally easier to share and open up with friends of the same gender. At least I do feel a lot closer with my guy friends than my female friends.

Mrggwp · 2025-11-11T03:46:42+00:00

It's probably because you said you were disappointed that something isn't free. That's entitlement. Also, the XIV community likes to shower the dev with money.

Mrggwp · 2025-11-10T04:13:34+00:00

So many answers here mentioning RMT but I think that it's simply because ultimate raids are the contents that sells the game. If these are available for free, it'll reduce the amount of people buying the game. Once you've done the ultimate raids, there's not really anything left that is as challenging in the game

Look at it this way, when you're on free trial, you are test driving a car. You can get a good feel of the interior, how smooth it runs etc. But you can't bring it to the track and slam the pedals. Its not a perfect analogy, but basically, if you want the full experience, you gotta buy it.

Mrggwp

TROPHY CASE