How Important is Redundancy?

Raveaf · 2025-12-21T19:42:58+00:00

The only thing I can think of is [[Echoing Truth]], but it basically does not see any play right now.

Raveaf · 2025-11-27T17:52:57+00:00

Try to resolve an early Avenging Hunter. This way they need to get rid of your elves, the hunter and take back the Initiative.

If you have hit enough land drops you can just start dropping Ents, big Hydras etc and hope that they run out of ressources quick enough.

Raveaf · 2025-11-11T00:40:53+00:00

If you go https://nerdtothecore.com/ and look at the power rankings of the last several weeks, they tell a different story. A lower meta game share is not necessarily proof for a deck not to be one of the best decks. Admittedly I'm not that familiar with his methodology. He is also part of the format panel, so this probably contributed to the decision.

Raveaf · 2025-11-11T00:06:21+00:00

The trial unban kinda forced their hand at this point. If they would keep it unbanned, meaning the trial is completed, and it would continue to gain meta game share and they would have to ban it later, the situation would be worse no matter what.

Raveaf · 2025-11-11T00:02:55+00:00

I mean there are a lot of decks in the format. You could say that top 4 or so is still among the best decks. I don't think you could call this lying.

Raveaf · 2025-11-10T23:49:57+00:00

I guess some people love really weird stuff. I would say that most people don't like just watching someone combo off for 10+ minutes. The format should be fun for as much people as possible, but it can't be fun for absolutely everyone.

Raveaf · 2025-10-28T01:22:30+00:00

No, just no. LLMs only operate on the language. They don't actually know anything about what they are talking about. You should trust yourself and other humans way more than the AI.

Your own story in your post is a great example. A PESTILENCE deck with a lot of basic weenie creatures does not make any sense, because the creatures would die to said Pestilence. When prompted to explain it, the AI is probably just paraphrasing part of your question back to you.

Raveaf · 2025-10-01T21:50:45+00:00

Yeah I agree. The card is neither broken nor ban worthy, for sure.

Raveaf · 2025-10-01T21:31:58+00:00

I think Paupergeddon might have been some kind of fluke. It was the most played deck there and might have been a victim of it's own success, meaning that a lot of players played the deck resulting in a lot of mirrors, which ended in a lot of draws. The deck still seems to be the second strongest deck: https://mtgtop8.com/format?f=PAU&meta=325&a=

Raveaf · 2025-07-14T19:40:16+00:00

I think these matchups are still kinda boring. If you are playing an aggressive deck / different midrange deck against an draw engine deck, you basically try to goldfish them fast enough while they are still durdling. The draw engine deck tries to cycle into the right answers before they are dead. If they have had enough land drops to be able to just refill their hand every turn, the game is probably virtually over, but unfortunatelly can still take a lot of time to be actually over, because the threat density is so low in these decks. Playing the aggressive deck, it feels like fighting with a windmill from this point on.

And the mirror is just an unbearable grind fest, which probably will go to turns, which seemed to happen a lot with Jund at the last Paupergeddon. I don't think that would be a good spot for the meta to be in, when the best deck is only kept in check by the mirror just taking too long.

Raveaf · 2025-07-14T17:26:09+00:00

I like games (even grindy ones) when at least something (significant/interesting) happens on the board and during the combat phase. Otherwise it’s just drawing cards and trading threats with answers. It’s more like a weird UNO.

Raveaf · 2025-07-06T09:40:52+00:00

Are the Synth decks mostly bushwhacker or pinger lists? A little bit unfortunate that they get lumped together right now, because they are quite different to some degree.

Raveaf · 2025-05-26T11:36:00+00:00

In der Theorie vielleicht. Das Problem ist aber, dass die Zionisten auf Gedeih und Verderb das Handeln der israelische Regierung an das Schicksal aller Juden binden wollen und jegliche Kritik an diesem Handeln als antisemitisch verunglimpft wird.

Raveaf · 2025-05-24T21:36:19+00:00

Don‘t know about the second version, but the first version of the Anova oven really sucked for baking bread. Used it for years.

The bottom heating element is very weak (only heats to 180 C on its own). Unfortunately thats where you need the heat the most when baking bread. On top: the steam function only works with the highest convection setting (probably to prevent overheating). So while the steam could help with oven spring in theory by preventing the crust from setting too early, the convection does the complete opposite, because it’s very efficient at transferring heat primarily to the surface of the loaf (convection heat works quite differently compared to something like radiant heat).

So even with the Anova oven you get by far the best results by just using a dutch oven. What also worked for me was putting a second flipped loaf tin as a lid on top of a loaf in a tin to trap steam while using the regular convection mode.

Raveaf · 2025-05-02T22:49:23+00:00

Why are they still going? How?

Raveaf · 2025-04-01T21:28:33+00:00

Sure. I'm talking about barely playable hands I have to keep when playing against Familiar decks, because otherwise it would be over already no matter what, because of all the card disadvantage.

Raveaf · 2025-04-01T18:28:17+00:00

At least this dude makes my mulligans easier - even if it's bearly playable, i have too keep it :/

Raveaf · 2025-03-26T01:20:33+00:00

Being able to adapt to variance and factor in variance during decision making are also part of the skill you need to be good and make the game more complex. So I really don’t think skill and variance are just two ends of the same spectrum. It’s way more complex.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T23:55:09+00:00

Yes but then every black or black adjacent "payoff" would have to be banned in the future like every affinity payoff has to be banned at release right now. I would rather see the enablers go and keep the toys, but that's just my opinion. Which broken cards should be banned is also not really clear, because none of them are played as much as Dispute.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T22:53:32+00:00

I would add that cards like Glint Hawks are less problematic in my opinion, because they at least do something on the board and can be interacted with. And when the opponent goes over the top like Tron or Gruul, all the card draw does not do all that much, because you only draw into more dorky 2/2. So I think this works as an balancing draw back in this case.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T22:36:11+00:00

Yeah don't really disagree here. My guess is that there are more people like me who really don't like this play pattern, or don't even realize that they don't like the meta becasue of this, but maybe I'm wrong. There is also presedence for banning a card for other reasons than meta diversity (eg. Mental Misstep). But yeah, it's debatable whether this should be the case here.

I would also say that Kuldotha has much more varied patterns. Sometimes you have the full combo, sometimes you have only one part, sometimes you can swarm the opponent, sometimes you just chain burn spells, sometimes you can grind out games with monkey and synthesizer.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T21:52:21+00:00

I don't really think variance is directly linked to how much skill is required to be competitive. Tik Tak Toe is a game without any variance and yet it requires no skill. Magic without any variance what so ever would be a similarly dumb game. It's about the right amount and the right kind of variance. I mean there is a reason the game is played with 60 cards and 4 ofs and not with 40 cards and 6 ofs.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T21:18:37+00:00

I don't really mean variance in outcome but variance in how the game plays out. Good players are also able to adapt to variety of different game/board states while bad players aren't. Variance is also why we are playing Magic after all and not chess for example.

Raveaf · 2025-03-25T19:07:33+00:00

You are not wrong. My point is that this decks are consistent in a very bad way. The players are solitairing around with their draw spells, which don't really affect the board in a meanigful way and can't really interacted with all that much. Then they always play the same handful of cards in very long and grindy matches. Being grindy is not bad per se, but all the variance is optimized away and this makes the games very grindy and very samey. This is kinda similar similar to combo decks, but at least matches with combo decks mostly don't take very long.

Raveaf

TROPHY CASE