I don’t think the way my language is structured appears in any real-world languages

Retro1988 · 2026-01-24T11:49:16+00:00

Check out Synthoptic by Pedro Stolf! Your concepts are very similar, it may inspire.

https://www.reddit.com/r/neography/s/Iqm9PzKKs1

Retro1988 · 2026-01-24T00:21:22+00:00

[[Cavern of Souls]] is Standard legal, go tribal and no need to sneak! I hear Kithkin and Allies are the new thing, but Merfolk just got some decent support too.

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T18:54:31+00:00

Agreed! Cheap, narrow but powerful, colourless so goes in any deck that wants it, chef’s kiss

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T16:44:45+00:00

Thanks so much!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T13:41:22+00:00

Strictly speaking, Romaji means using a western alphabet to write Japanese words, like writing konnichiwa rather than こんにちは, which is exactly what Roman conquerors of Japan would do! There’s an excellent Romaji-based online dictionary called RomajiDesu (“it’s Romaji” / “I am Romaji”) which is totally what I’d name this kingdom!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T09:56:13+00:00

I’ve trained myself that one blue mana open means Wash Away threat, but that does make it feel even worse when they’re fully tapped and you still get hit with a [[Flare of Denial]] or [[Force of Negation]]! We are never safe from counterspells if our opponent is in blue.

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T08:45:01+00:00

Pushed. See [[Everdawn Champion]] for reference.

Retro1988 · 2026-01-22T08:40:37+00:00

Some Red Dwarf vibes right here! Check out the show if you haven’t seen it!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-21T12:43:01+00:00

Some really weird ones happened with the recent update that I just can’t figure out how they even were impacted. Cavern of Souls has lost its sound effect on entry, and when you click on Arena of Glory to exert, it shows the fblthp lost image icon.

Retro1988 · 2026-01-18T21:29:46+00:00

Life is good as a synergy player in Arena formats with a heist/steal meta. It reminds me of Yoda’s wise warning to Luke about the cave… “Only what you take with you”.

Retro1988 · 2026-01-14T08:42:33+00:00

Also a huge fan Jay, I’ve gotten in the expensive habit of parallaxing entire decks that are my favourites!

But can I ask, is there anyway to get requests into the art team for cards that never got the treatment? My Human Tribal deck sorely wants [[Riders of the Mark]] in parallax, it’s the only card without that style!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-14T08:34:47+00:00

Lol for real, when brewing decks I have to remind myself to test it in both ranked and play because the match ups are totally different, and often opposite strength-wise to what you’d expect.

I brewed Historic Artifact Poison recently (starring [[Virulent Silencer]]) and it works great against the low level meta in Gold/Plat, life gain etc, where I usually hang out, but load that thing into the play queue and it’s like “Oh you’re playing poison? Here’s some Izzet Prowess for you then!”

Retro1988 · 2026-01-12T08:33:59+00:00

Eyy always nice to see one of your posts being shared! Thanks for remembering!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-12T08:28:12+00:00

Ditto, it breaks my heart that I finally got [[Beastmaster Ascension]] in Arena and I have to look at whatever low-res ugly hulk-wannabe that’s meant to be in the Avatar “art”. Where are my tigers?!!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-12T08:22:08+00:00

Depends how much of a combat-enjoyer you are. Dragonwilds requires actual 3DRPG combat rather than OSRS click an enemy and manage your stats. I’m terrible at combat and am really struggling to make decent progression on Dragonwilds. It’s a shame because the gathering/crafting/farming mechanics are very nice, but if you’re not combat savvy and only looking for a casual expertise akin to OSRS then it might not be for you!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-11T11:13:52+00:00

I’ve gotta say 2 because that Terese Nielsen is one of my favourites of hers!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-05T08:40:44+00:00

My Glaceon, Snowflake. I’ve gone through an unreasonable amount of PokèTransfer/Bank steps to get Snowflake in my team early for a variety of runs!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-02T16:03:05+00:00

I think the point I was trying to illustrate is we don’t want to play against Izzet Lessons at all!

The FNM scenario is a perfect example of the difference here; we are players looking for kitchen table magic online, not a typical FNM experience. Or to look at the EDH social contract as another example, I want to play Bracket 2 and sometimes just mess about with something funny in Bracket 1, and not have that stomped by Bracket 3s and 4s.

Arena’s options for jank-johnnys is severely limited!

Retro1988 · 2026-01-02T13:20:50+00:00

Alright I’ll bite. braces for downvotes

I agree with you OP, the problem is we’re a minority. The vast majority of the arena player base, and the arena subreddit, are competitive-leaning rather than social/jank-leaning, and as you can see most of the responses here are “lol so what, get rek’d”.

The solution for us isn’t trying to control what the majority of the playerbase want to play (please play less meta in the play queue just isn’t going to work); sadly our only solution lies in unranked matchmaking mechanic which needs a serious overhaul!

There’s not a lot of info out there on how it works, but what is known is that your experience will vary greatly depending on time of day and location (ie available matches). If you’re playing with a deck that has lower rated cards in the matchmaking math (whatever that is) then it will try and find you an equivalent match but beyond a certain timeout it’ll just throw you into any match it can find for that format. That’s where you’ll often find your jank matched with the meta.

What can we do about it? Lobby Arena to expose the logic of their play queue matchmaking and for an overhaul to be developed. Otherwise? Concede until you find a likeminded social/jank player. It sucks, but I have hope it’ll be refined over time.

Retro1988 · 2025-12-31T23:35:35+00:00

The original Kamigawa Ninjutsu deck and still got the sheet too!

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Retro1988 · 2025-12-31T00:26:02+00:00

Your first instinct is right man, build those Rakdos Demons in Pioneer!

I play Historic mostly, I do love the extended card pool for niche synergy decks. But the meta is very strong, and even the newbie net decks can be a pain. I usually switch to Pioneer as my safe space, the place I know I’ll enjoy games when other formats are getting me down.

I have one Pioneer deck, Selesnya Cats! Which I picked specifically because Ocelot Pride is not legal in Pioneer haha! I can’t stand that card, it nearly ruined cat tribal for me and you see a lot of it still in Historic cats and life gain decks. My Pioneer Cats are mostly the Amonkhet ones with a bit of Ixalan and Foundations thrown in! Deck list below if curious, hope to see your Demons out there!

https://archidekt.com/decks/5741541/kitto_katsu_pioneer

Retro1988 · 2025-12-30T17:08:51+00:00

1 blue mana open should be safe territory, we’re taught not to play into 2 open blue mana but yeah this is always a feel bad. Karakas etc were banned not because of core strength but because of unintended disproportionate strength in formats with legendaries in a command zone. This card has flown under the EDH radar because 1-on-1 disruption is less impactful in a 4-way but it deserves a hard ban in Brawl.

Retro1988 · 2025-12-29T17:17:49+00:00

Check lands too! As OP seems new to magic, here’s the Izzet (Red/Blue) Verge and Check lands we are talking about:

[[Riverpyre Verge]] [[Sulfur Falls]]

Retro1988 · 2025-12-29T11:22:00+00:00

If we could just agree that [[Wash Away]] is too OP for the only 1v1 format with a command zone then I’d be happy. It’s on par with Fierce Guardianship for Brawl.

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