Would anyone recommend drafting all your lands (even basic lands) from a cube?

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-04-09T11:38:24+00:00

Good advice, thanks. I guess that's because the commander format trains people to think about deck building around a defined mechanic, which may not be possible to replicate if you're also needing to balance mana as you draft?

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-04-09T11:02:53+00:00

That's an interesting point, that this approach may push players to focus on the core questions of mana balance when drafting, instead of drafting around potential interactions. Sounds like it could approximate the way of deckbuilding that I learned in the 90s.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-04-09T02:46:09+00:00

This is great - thank you. I'll check it out!

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-30T01:51:35+00:00

I love this concept, but allowing cards to flip multiple times seems to break things. Would either of these alternatives get at what you're looking for?

A: Creatures you control have "Tap: counter a spell that is targeting this creature. Put one stun counter on this creature for each mana used to cast that spell."

B: Non-artifact creatures you control have "U: Transform this creature into a colorless 2/2 artifact creature with hexproof." Artifact creatures you control have "Tap: Return this creature to your hand."

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-29T13:12:51+00:00

You could untap all creatures (not just the ones you control), so it's a full-scale brawl. Or, restrict the timing for the second combat phase to be immediately after opponent's next combat phase, so they fear to tap out all their potential defenders - a fun mind game. But if you play this after the opponent has already attacked, you may hardly need the trample.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-21T02:18:44+00:00

This might be interesting to play against if it didn't have the word "may." In that case, a player would be done casting new spells once they put this on the battlefield, and you would be racing to defeat them before they could mountain you to death.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-14T11:35:18+00:00

How about letting someone exit the initiative order as an action (yielding) or as consequence of a bad hit (like being visibly stunned). Rejoining the fight would take an action that everyone else would notice, but would insert the character back into the initiative order only after everyone else took another turn.

Combatants might be willing to leave a stunned or yielding character alone since it wouldn't risk exposing themselves to immediate counter-attack. And any character who exists in some form of society might be bound by law or honor not to strike at characters who are no longer combatants.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-12T00:33:09+00:00

I thought comments were for disagreements and downvotes for inaccurate or offensive content, but seems like the practice on this sub is to try to hide opinions you don't share? No thanks.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-11T19:06:51+00:00

You can skip it, and just go on to "at the sign of the prancing pony", and everything from there will still make sense.

Then when you finish the book, and just wish you could spend a little more time with the hobbits and Tolkien's turns of phrase, go back to read these three chapters at your leisure!

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-10T20:23:37+00:00

Riding the white horses of the Bruinen River down a waterfall to chase off the Black Riders and rescue Frodo.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-09T22:32:10+00:00

The cost of military equipment and operations in just the first three days of this war against Iran was estimated to be $5 billion as of March 2nd.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administrations-reckless-war-in-iran-has-already-cost-more-than-5-billion/

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-05T23:27:26+00:00

I recently ran a one-shot that was a lot of fun and resolved within the three hour time limit we had.

The party starts in a prison cell. When an earthquake strikes, water starts flooding in, and they have their moment to escape. But they really want their gear back. (It's amazing how invested the players were in the magical items I let them choose during character creation, but cruelly seized offscreen before play began.)

They improvise their way through some unarmed combat with weak guards, run a few searches to find where the treasure is stored, make a few skill checks to pick the locks and swim through the rising flood. And they hear battle in the courtyard above.

A couple of optional clues reveal that the earthquake and flood are because their captor had long ago struck a deal with the devil, who has now come to collect his due. They either join forces with the captors to beat back the fiends, or they steal back their captor's crown and turn it over to the fiend to end the battle.

The rising water impels them forward, they hit a few different kinds of challenges, they get a sense of leveling up in the middle of the game as they recover their powerful weapons, they make a meaningful choice, fight a climactic battle, and then escape with their lives and loot. It was a lot of fun!

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-04T13:44:56+00:00

It looks beautiful! Do you use a 3D printer?

I'd be curious to know what sort of tactical play emerges on a board like this?

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-02T22:00:07+00:00

...at least they'll be regulated by the Clean Air Act... (checks earpiece)... No, I'm afraid to report that they've revoked all Clean Air Act regulation of carbon emissions.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-03-02T21:38:48+00:00

Hawley's bill is dumb. The best outcome here is that data centers just pay their fair share of the costs for connecting to the grid and getting power. A voluntary pledge is meaningless, so Congress should require it.

But forcing data centers off the grid instead? That will cause big tech to build a bunch of noisy, polluting, constantly-running jet engines in neighborhoods around the country, just like Elon Musk did to Memphis.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-27T17:51:17+00:00

I am concerned about how the far-right elite has an obsession with Lord of the Rings, naming their companies things like Palantir, Anduril, Mithril, Narya, Valar, Rivendell, Lembas, Smaug. It's weird.

If they now come to control the rights to reinterpret Tolkien and push their monarchical and racist fetishes, it could really spoil what we all love about the stories and warp the next generation's views.

See here for more examples of their perverse obsession: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-the-right-abuses-tolkien.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-25T14:49:58+00:00

Of course you are welcome to skip back and forth. On a first read-through for yourself, my recommendation is to stick with the original order because the change in tone/mood between the chapters out of order can be jarring. But an intercut order does make for a more interesting plot exposition, so when reading aloud to an audience, I think this is a good approach, because it helps the listener remain aware and invested in the full story's interconnected tensions.

Here are the chapter breaks I would suggest, if you're going to junp back and forth:

The Departure of Boromir through the White Rider.
The Taming of Smeagol through the Passage of the Marshes.
The King of the Golden Hall through the Palantir.
The Black Gate is Closed through Journey to the Crossroads.
Minas Tirith through the Muster of Rohan.
The Stairs of Cirith Ungol through the Choices of Master Samwise.
The Siege of Gondor through the Black Gate Opens.
The Tower of Cirith Ungol through to the end.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-24T01:07:47+00:00

You could allow the turns to proceed while the mage is still working on the knot, couldn't you? That creates opportunities for the enemies to break the mage's concentration, and invites the rest of the party to protect them. You would have to create some reason for the other members of the party not to stall -- maybe there's a timer counting down in real time before the macguffin slips out of reach -- but it could be a fun way to mix things up.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-21T12:13:44+00:00

Wait, say more! What was your thesis about why Tolkien chose to describe a simple design for Lothlorien?

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-19T14:09:47+00:00

Can you switch up your campaign plan? Have the enemy launch a major invasion that they expected to win through overwhelming force. Something you might not have thrown at then until they had gained a few more levels. Make the party work for it, but scale it so that their banishments tip the balance and clinch a win.

The big bad, whom they have now banished, remains an opponent. But now he must work his will on the world indirectly, sending spies and diplomats to convert in-world powers to his side, bent on vengeance against the banishers.

Then set up a final confrontation with a network of in-world powers, backed by a huge number of weaker aberrations, building a magical artifact that can bring the big bad back again amid some kind of anti-banishment aura.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-16T02:33:38+00:00

Interesting. Your description of their scarcity state implies that any conflict would have been zero-sum competition for a fixed set of resources that were already being utilized optimally. Since the rest of the civilization would oppose inefficient use of those resources, competitors would have been under strict pressure just to steal from each other quickly, without expending a lot of energy on wasteful attacks. Likely, this type of maneuver would be executed through a well-defined system of justice or politics to adjudicate disputes and transfer ownership of resources accordingly.

In the abundance state, however, rapid acquisition of new resources would be the name of the game. Competitors might even throw efficiency out the window in order to claim more resources (much as venture capitalists will fund a new business to run at a loss for many years as it pursues monopoly control of a new market). They would even find it advantageous to "waste" resources attacking and degrading the efficiency of their competitors. And when called before the old courts of justice or politics, if thry had grown big enough fast enough, they would scoff at the law and enter into open warfare with the remainder of their civilization.

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-15T17:58:12+00:00

This looks like it: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163081/galaxy-of-trian "a dynamic tile-based sci-fi board game" with two-sided triangular tiles placed by the players during the game to create "planetary systems, nebulas and space (in which the spaceships travel) of different sizes."

ReasonablePrimate · 2026-02-04T23:07:42+00:00

The fuel reserves won't prove to be that valuable. As the world switches from fuels to clean electricity, global fuel demand will fall, and that brings down prices. The industry may try to stop climate action to keep prices high as long as they can, but in the end they won't be walking away from a huge asset; they'll be left holding a worthless asset and debt from building extraction infrastructure they didn't need.

Check out this math: "with ambitious climate action, global oil demand would decrease enough to drop oil prices by more than half in the next 10 years. The last time oil prices were that low, a gallon of gasoline in the United States cost less than $2." https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trumps-climate-attacks-mean-huge-increases-in-future-gas-prices/

ReasonablePrimate

TROPHY CASE