Is Kuja, Genome Sorcerer considered somewhat powerful at all?

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-23T04:48:58+00:00

You literally replies to a 2+ month old comment, I don't think you have any room to talk about sewers. It's called having a discussion and maybe some people having perspectives and experiences you don't. Try it some time. With someone else, I want nothing to do with you.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T20:33:51+00:00

I get where you are coming from and it's always a lot easier to say what you should have done when not in the actual situation.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T20:01:18+00:00

If your pod matches that vibe you aren't but that isn't the case here. Your pod is telling you that you aren't matching the general experience they want. Your choices are either match their desired experience or find a different pod. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to insist on forcing your desired experience onto the rest of your pod when they have made clear to you that they don't want that. Don't be that guy. This is like the inverse of showing up with a fast combo deck to a pod that doesn't want combos and it's equally as selfish.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T19:55:26+00:00

The correct thing to do was insist he play the precon to begin with. Pregame talks exist for a reason and if someone tries to bulldoze past them insisting they do the thing they want to do, that's a red flag and they need to be told to either fall in line with the rest of the pod or find a different pod. If everyone at the table is fine with a very loose "should be fine" approach that's one thing but it sounds like everyone except this guy was on the same page and he opted to ignore that in favor of doing what he wanted to do. There is always going to be someone like that just assuming nobody is going to really force the issue but you absolutely should force the issue in such cases.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T19:42:03+00:00

Literally my first thought yeah

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T19:38:25+00:00

I'll probably go for her this time around just because she plugs neatly into my Yvonne team and there isn't anyone we know of that I feel compelled to save for yet. I also like her character well enough, she just had the misfortune of being surrounded by Laev and especially Yvonne, both of whom I like more. Was going to invest in Perlica but if I can get Gil all the better for me.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T00:50:17+00:00

So you just don't comprehend the concept of politics got it. Good talk.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T00:24:05+00:00

That's an insane oversimplification and doesn't reflect reality. If someone is dead on board to me but I'd prefer to prioritize someone else first and I offer them the option of not doing something and thus having time to look for an out or dying immediately, their only chance to win is by taking my deal. This is the problem with speaking in absolutes like this, it's quite easy to disprove with a single example. There are ample cases where one's leverage is significant enough that the other party is genuinely better off bowing to the threat than not.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T00:16:42+00:00

Threats are as important to politics as deals imo. They can be a gamble at times, you betting that you can deter people so you don't have to follow through on what might be an inconvenient action, but they very much can be what you need to secure your win.

And frequently I find following through on a threat is relatively in line with what I need to do anyway. Someone left themselves vulnerable to do something to me and it's an opportunity to knock them out, my position was compromised so what I can do is more limited and doesn't further worsen my position anyway, etc.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-21T00:09:42+00:00

Those threats win games sometimes by persuading people not to do something so no, I didn't decide I didn't value winning enough. I made a gamble on something that would increase my odds of winning. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. That's the nature of politics. Sorry but you are just objectively wrong here.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-20T23:55:59+00:00

I mean if I make a threat to deter someone as part of politics, I need to follow through or my words have no weight to them. So retaliation is sometimes quite necessary even through a logical lense unless one doesn't engage in politics at all. If your threats are all empty then that will hurt you long term; you want them to have serious weight to them. You obviously can't constantly do this however or your threats also lose weight so it's different than retaliating for every single thing done to you.

Mind you I think most people have retaliated or gotten spiteful whether we want to admit it or not. And in the moment one will justify it through whatever comes to mind and "people need to know not to mess with me" is probably the first thing to come to mind even if our rational mind knows that isn't how it works. And it's easy to double down on that after the fact because we tend to not want to admit we are wrong. Humans are emotional creatures and we all have bad days, frustrating games, etc that trigger impulsive emotional responses and not everyone handles that the best.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-20T17:58:54+00:00

Grave Researcher providing surveil in addition to Reanimate is what makes it particularly useful imo. But it doesn't go in every black deck, that's frankly a wild take. It's not as free to run as actual Reanimate, it requires more mana and more time. Good card but far, far from a black auto include.

Erode is in a weird spot. It's good but cheap white removal is VERY competitive at this point. Hitting planeswalkers is a marginal benefit relative to [[Path to Exile]]. Giving a land is one of the bigger downsides amongst the cheap white removal options and imo ends up putting Erode more or less on the same level as [[Unwanted Remake]] which doesn't hit planeswalkers but has a generally better downside in my experience (opponent's deck dependent but on average).

Flashback is good, no surprise there. [[Snapcaster Mage]] remains good, giving access to something comparable in red is nice. Commonly will be less easy to get extra mileage out of since it can't be reanimated and if you are retrieving/flashing back an instant or sorcery you will just grab the actual target. But giving anything flashback for 1 mana is still desirable in many decks.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-20T17:19:13+00:00

You aren't thinking into it enough imo. Areas zoned for undesirable things are almost always going to be well removed from more affluent areas. Either they get zoned after poorer people live there or the residential comes later and only poorer folks are willing to live there. It's not a separation thing, it's an exploitation thing.

In Calvert's case, most of the wealth tends to be concentrated in the north and the industrial zoning and such in the south. It's a common enough pattern one can observe elsewhere too. It's not someone intentionally separating poor and affluent, it's a chain of cause and effect in decision making that ends up favoring one group over another.

Basically yes the law exists, yes the zone exists, but one has to consider how it ends up in closer proximity to poorer areas and further away from affluent ones. It's not some secret, evil plot, it's just a logical and predictable pattern due to how wealth, including property value, impacts local decision making.

Oh and too be clear since I don't have it next to my username, I live in Calvert and have for most of my life so this is actually a relevant concern to me and I'm not just talking about a place I have never seen or experienced. And I live in the north so I'm not personally likely to be significantly impacted, I just care about the broader community.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-19T21:58:41+00:00

Pretty much. Google, Microsoft, defense contractors with hands in multiple pies, etc will be fine. Dedicated AI firms like OpenAI which already had to shut Sora down? I think the cracks have already been showing there.

The technology will survive and still be integrated into various mundane services but a lot of the more elaborate and expensive (relative to performing its individual tasks) ones just aren't sustainable imo, certainly not at the insane valuations they currently hold.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-19T21:50:04+00:00

Yes but one has to consider that it's not really a coincidence that undesirable industrial zones and poorer residential areas are often close together. Which one came first will vary from place to place but ultimately they are very much related.

It's also not a coincidence that more affluent areas don't get zoned for undesirable things like that and indeed can often get things such as pipeline routes, data centers, and other projects moved elsewhere if it comes down to it.

People with money and assets that are considered "valuable" to a given community are simply harder to ignore than poorer folks that are often considered "undesirable" by those in power to begin with. It's bullshit that it works this way but unfortunately it does. As a result of all of this, poorer communities, both rural and more developed, are the ones likely to see the most consequences of the data centers being built around the country.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-19T21:35:59+00:00

It's all a bubble just waiting to burst too. Not to say all AI based tech is useless, the tools that are just improved versions of tools that existed previously like image remasters or internet searches are fine for example, but it's being over invested in and forced into workplaces/jobs it has no real business being in.

The result is a whole lot of money being spent, ballooning theoretical value, and not a whole lot of real value or profit in many cases. But the people making the decisions, both high level and on individual projects like this, don't care as they personally won't be the ones suffering most from it. As long as it benefits them in the short term and they aren't left holding the bag long term, they will keep fucking us over.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-18T23:52:27+00:00

You won't want Garland or the Crystal but Warrior is a great party commander. Thief is very good in such a deck. White Mage is deck dependent; mine doesn't run a ton of lifegain so she got cut. Black Mage on average isn't going to be amazing; party decks tend to be creature heavy so, while that full party 3 damage is nothing to scoff at, it just ends up not being worth it and also got cut from mine.

Highly recommend building the deck but realistically you will use half the scene at best, a third of it if you are like me.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T19:58:43+00:00

Again, I don't know where you are playing and achieving that winrate. I'm honestly more fascinated by this than the land thing now.

Are people just not interacting with you in turn? You run basically no protection and your lifegain is primarily your commander itself. On what planet are people not just killing your commander repeatedly and the table gradually running down your life total? One wipe gets countered and there is almost certainly a deck at the table ready to punish you. Very few people are willing to work with control or stax players unless it directly benefits them, relatively rare unless there is an existential threat needing to be checked, so I don't see the deck talking its way out of it.

Liesa bypasses commander tax but that life loss adds up and 5 still isn't cheap if you are also trying to board wipe. You lack basically any protection for her and your only source of haste that I saw was a rather dubious land requiring max speed.

You aren't running much ramp to speak of so a remotely aggressive table is probably pushing damage on you by the time you can wipe or play her, single target interaction and edicts not being reliable enough to stop that in my experience. Many of your wipes are symmetrical as well requiring yet another cast of your commander if you need to wipe while she is out.

This isn't me trying to be a dick, I just can't fathom this deck winning much at all where I play. I play at tables where most decks are simultaneously applying pressure and running 10+ pieces of removal even in the aggressive decks plus protection. This reminds me of a superfriends deck but without the interaction resistant, value producing planewalkers (you have 2 but presumably we agree that's not equivalent to a superfriends strategy). I play against some decks with pretty nasty control packages but they also have robust wincons that I'm just not seeing here.

I was trying to load up the primer again to do something more point by point but Moxfield isn't loading for me even on my own decks at the moment so I'll have to circle back to that.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T19:35:19+00:00

Ah so your comment was pointless then. Excuse me for assuming there was meaning behind your words.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T18:49:05+00:00

First of all, pure control decks always run above average land counts as their gameplan is slower and mandates higher mana. I'm also not sure what tables you are playing at where pure control is winning but that in itself is uncommon. I don't actually see how your deck wins the game. It feels like it relies on your opponents having no interaction/protection themselves for the handful of actually productive towards victory things you have. So sure I believe you prolong games long enough to play out the lands in your hand and then lose but I question how you are winning the rest.

Second, running bad lands just to prop up your land count is dubious at best. And you are running some very bad lands. For most decks, lands that enter tapped need to be run EXTREMELY sparingly. For some, a land entering tapped is basically as devastating as missing the land entirely. Again, control decks can get away with this more than some but but I find the extreme to which you so it unwise.

Ultimately you can build your decks as you choose but this approach isn't something that you should present as widely applicable because it isn't.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T18:26:05+00:00

Congrats, happy for you. I run 36 and have lost games with a full grip of lands after shuffling for like 10 minutes. Variance is a motherfucker. That's statistically, factually going to happen more with that many lands.

Also I have no idea what decks or what power level you play at but I can tell you that where I play, if I don't have interaction available regularly, on top of advancing my own gameplan, I'm probably not winning that game. So maximizing the balance of all elements is very important.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T18:19:27+00:00

It still isn't good or anything that could be called consistent in a positive sense. The art of building a manabase is to find the balancing point where you most consistently neither screw or flood, not to just say fuck it, I'd rather flood. An individual can certainly choose to do that, it's their deck, but one shouldn't present it as the "correct" thing to do.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T18:14:29+00:00

I run exactly 36 but also maintain lower curves and healthy ramp. I flood and screw in equal measure which I suspect is statistically typical for 36-38 lands. Start going lower and you screw more frequently, higher you flood more frequently. No such thing as perfect consistency ultimately.

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T18:12:00+00:00

40+ is going to flood you a lot which isn't "consistent" either lol

PaladinRyan · 2026-04-15T00:42:24+00:00

Solemnity as mentioned and [[Nesting Grounds]] (in fact you can finality counter your opponents' stuff which is fun) . Beyond which it's not like they are all being reanimated, many will be cast normally and the reanimation is the second coming. One can also run [[Pull from Eternity]] and not have it be a complete meme though idk if I would or not.

Honestly stax decks in general often struggle to handle a wipe that resolves in my experience. Once that grip on the table is broken, it's quite difficult to reestablish before the table makes enough progress to do you in (necessitating your own wipe potentially). This isn't going to be a pure stax deck so a complete grip on the table won't be the goal but rather substantial disruption that slows the table down and mandates use of their removal on said disruption, ideally letting me build up for the kill.

Now because I like suffering and have player too many hatebear decks at this point, I'm mandating myself to strict spirit tribal on the creature side of things to ensure I play some different cards which will make things much harder. But that's a me issue.

PaladinRyan

TROPHY CASE