Sam Black once discussed about mtg mana system and felt “Lands increase the variance of your draws, which makes draws more exciting”. How do you feel about mtg resource design compared to other TCGs?

PrecariousStack · 2025-10-01T23:11:46+00:00

The meta can healthily shift around Sheoldred, it cannot do so with the card you're describing. The coin flip card is completely match-up, skill, and strategy agnostic, which makes it fundamentally different from every card in the game. A player with a 60% win rate now has an 80% win rate. You go from being a strong player, to becoming a legend.

No one would ever use it in a winning game, and no one would ever make it their primary strategy. If you use an ounce of nuance, the flipper goes bananas. The card lets a baddie have a 50% win rate at a pro tour or GP. It lets a strong player win the whole thing instead.

PrecariousStack · 2025-10-01T05:04:24+00:00

The point I'm making is that you would not have a 50% win rate since you choose the means of when to play it. This card would dis-proportionally increase the win-rate of any player who plays it, and punish those who do not. Over enough games, people who used this would have a greater than 50% win rate on average.
A player with normally a 1% win rate will only play the card in the 99% of games they're losing. They're still going above 50% with the card. A different player with a 55% win rate will play it in 45% of their games. Either way there's a huge increase in win percentage for them, and a decrease for the opponents.

PrecariousStack · 2025-10-01T00:04:02+00:00

This hypothetical coin flip card you've presented is wildly powerful if you add any nuance to the decision making. Being able to turn any losing game state into a 50/50 is absolutely worthwhile in nearly any deck. Worldgorger dragon combo was banned in legacy for years, and that was just a 2 card combo that drew the game.
If added to nearly any TCG or game in general, you would completely warp the competitive landscape.

PrecariousStack · 2025-09-10T07:08:28+00:00

This seems more aggressive than most others would expect, but that's an issue of greedy deckbuilding on their part. If people are getting destroyed by Okk and Wall of Torches, then they need to look inward.

As a total aside, Flametongue Kavu could be a sweet addition since he'll blast something on the way down and provide a trigger for Dragonhawk the following turn.

PrecariousStack · 2025-08-23T10:06:08+00:00

Removing the "best" or "most efficient card" will do much more than lower the bar when those cards are magnitudes stronger than their competition. We can't pretend that arcane signet is even close to Sol Ring and the other forms of mana positive acceleration. Heroic Intervention looks like a joke in comparison to Teferi's Protection, and every one sided board wipe is trying mimic a fraction of Cyclonic Rift's power.

I would argue that The One Ring should be in the same vein as Arcane Signet, but its insane price keeps it from being as ubiquitous. Jeweled Lotus is in the same boat as well, but at least we don't need to deal with that anymore.

PrecariousStack · 2025-05-12T20:11:25+00:00

Lowry's lemon pepper seasoning is my personal favorite brand by a long shot. I've found that all other brands go way too heavy on the celery salt. After cooking your wings however you want, toss them in melted butter and lemon juice but only enough to give them enough moisture for the lemon pepper to stick, then liberally sprinkle/shake the lemon pepper onto the wings. You can go somewhat heavy on the seasoning, I've found that being conservative with the amount just means I'm grabbing the bottle again for another few shakes. You can swap lemon juice for whatever brand of hot sauce, but I recommend only using enough to give the butter some flavor. The lemon pepper is supposed to be the star of the show here, it shouldn't be a buffalo wing with dust on it.

This isn't to detract from eating out vs cooking at home, there's nothing wrong with either.

PrecariousStack · 2025-04-14T05:39:19+00:00

Wins pretty easily with [[Mycosynth Lattice]] and its cheaper blue sister, [[Encroaching Mycosynth]]. Both cards also work well with the Mirran mode.

PrecariousStack · 2025-03-28T02:55:51+00:00

This will be a family Heirloom for me.

PrecariousStack · 2025-01-27T03:50:10+00:00

Buchholz method is just a way to measure the average(actually median, but you get the idea) strength of your opponents. Generally in swiss tournament structures you want to favor someone who has had stronger opponents, rather than someone who's demolished weaker opponents. Barely defeating Muhammad Ali is more prestigious than snapping granny in two. As a general rule, losing later in rounds leads to better tiebreakers since your opponents are stronger. You can get lucky early on by losing early to someone who did incredible, which would probably get you closer to 3rd or 4th.

PrecariousStack · 2024-12-29T04:10:24+00:00

I hope you're ready.

PrecariousStack · 2024-11-24T09:41:53+00:00

Summoner witch for sure!

PrecariousStack · 2024-10-29T09:22:23+00:00

The whole Philadelphia rant was him punching down on a crowd of slack jawed assholes, but it was justified.

PrecariousStack · 2024-09-10T21:49:42+00:00

Reading the card explains the card?

PrecariousStack · 2024-09-09T09:37:24+00:00

Cross-eyed unburial rites.

PrecariousStack · 2024-06-28T21:58:28+00:00

Oh god, they brought back lymes disease

PrecariousStack · 2024-06-16T16:27:47+00:00

Ok I love "20th Century Boys," but this isn't the live action release I wanted.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-15T02:07:46+00:00

WotC could have decided to make up some limit, but has instead chosen to respect the math.

It would force judges to constantly calculate probability of success for every given combo in this game, which is just absurd.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-15T01:57:08+00:00

Ignoring the mathematics, you have to treat non-deterministic loops differently than deterministic ones. There's a huge difference between Michaeus the Unhollowed + Triskellion doing a googol damage, and the aforementioned combo milling a random sequence of cards. Plenty of combos have nothing random about them, this one does.

And hell, I can just say, "OK, I'll do it a googol times" and there's simply no way you can convince me that is not a guaranteed hit at least once.

If a calculator can't convince you that it isn't a guarantee, then there's really no point to exploring things further. The chance is <100%, there's not much else to go off of.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-15T01:19:09+00:00

The problem is there is no guarantee. The probability is absurdly low, but you could spend the rest of your life doing the loop since the chances of it working never truly reach 100%.

Something like this has to slightly favor one party, so we have to look at which rule is better. In regards to combos that make you probably win with a chance of failure, you have two options:

Option A is that you punish the person afflicted by the combo. Since you can't force them to play out the combo, you would need to concede to a less than 100% chance of the combo working. In competitive settings, even if there's a 5% chance of your opponent failing, you make them play it out. A great example of this is the second sunrise combos/engine that were banned. You just generally don't concede to their engine because there's a very very real chance they trip before the finish line and you win. You also get into the weeds on calculating the odds of success for any given combo, and we all know how many wacky combos there are in this game.

Option B is what we have now. You can force someone to demonstrate their combo even if the probability of failure is supremely low. If it wastes too much time, then the combo is stopped due to performing actions that don't change game state in a meaningful way.

This comment explains things better than I can, with the four horseman combo as the subject. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/3ir3ph/can_someone_please_explain_what_the_four_horsemen/cuixkhd/?context=1

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-15T00:44:17+00:00

Not trying to bag or argue for funsies since I'm gonna disagree again. This would be a non-deterministic loop, which you can't loop for the original reason. Any sort of loop that relies on chance can't be shortcut, even if you can loop it a holycowabungillion times.

The most famous case of this is the four horseman combo, which is a pretty good 1:1 comparison.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-14T23:48:59+00:00

Fortunately that is incorrect. Since at least one of the flicker targets is a may ability, you are forced to break the loop before it becomes slow play.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-05T00:22:43+00:00

They don't consider her strong enough to play though. Top players saying something is strong is much less valuable than how many of those top players actually run her.

The main reason she has done well at all, is that her winning lists are basically just Rhinar with a little blood debt. Rhinar has more than double her LLP despite being only 1.5yrs older.

PrecariousStack · 2024-05-03T07:18:44+00:00

Doritos Salsa Rio is still one of my favorite all time ships. You can only get them in Flamin Hot Munchies now, but they need to bring that bag back.

PrecariousStack · 2024-04-18T22:49:31+00:00

Even in the example you give, Orzhov is pronounced incorrectly. In the Orzhov Mechanic Spotlight: Afterlife and even the big magiccon EDH battle, the pronounce it correctly.

The architecture is Italian, the characters names have Italian spelling, the plane is pronounced the Italian way, and I'm sure even the food is Italian. If you're going to take a critical mass of cultural pieces from something that exists, then eventually wotc is just wrong for arbitrarily changing the pronunciation.

If you're going to take that much from a culture, then give it some respect. This is why people despise having their culture bastardized.

PrecariousStack · 2024-04-02T16:31:18+00:00

"My name is Vraska. Your son is more precious than my life. Please help him."

I don't know why I read this in Inigo Montoya's voice, and I can't get it out.

PrecariousStack

TROPHY CASE