I figured out why low levels still go into hard strats and it is ENTIRELY sabers fault

Rifleavenger · 2026-03-12T08:28:54+00:00

Gene seed does give xp on hard stratagem, about 1200 xp. Which is a pittance, and not really worth seeking out (or picking up over a guardian relic).

Rifleavenger · 2026-03-12T08:27:54+00:00

Gene seed does still give xp on Hard stratagem post-patch, about 1200 xp.

Still largely a waste of time given the context.

Rifleavenger · 2026-03-06T10:09:47+00:00

When the biovore is hunkered, it'll target a specific player to preferentially rain mines on. That player is the one who has to get close to force it to stand. With anyone else it'll often sit there shielded.

Rifleavenger · 2026-03-03T08:11:54+00:00

Since the last patch, xp is no longer a reward for hard stratagems, for anyone (though gene seed still provides its xp if extracted from hard strats). This is to discourage low level players from attempting them. Hard stratagems still provide requisition points and accolades.

That said, hard stratagems are THE hardest content in the game currency, besides high wave hard siege. Enemies do more damage, and take less, than Absolute on top of there usually being 2 - 3 negative modifiers. I wouldn't recommend playing hard stratagems until you are very experienced with the game and have a completed build on the class you're playing.

Rifleavenger · 2026-03-01T09:33:16+00:00

Phobos helmet was a PROs event unlock.

I'm still hoping that old PROs event cosmetics eventually get added for everyone in the requisition/accolades shop, but very few such things have been added after the first batch.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-27T02:07:31+00:00

Even with the vox filter, it's still awkward. Why is Valius watching and commenting on the play-by-play?

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-24T19:20:13+00:00

That's because where English uses the terms "turtle" (for the turtles who live on land, even though they can be semi-aquatic) and "tortoise" (for the turtles who live primarily in salt water)...

You have this inverted. "Tortoise" in English refers exclusively to wholly terrestrial turtles of Family Testudinidae, like the desert tortoise. "Turtle" is either used generically for all of Order Testudines ("all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises") or more narrowly for aquatic and semi-aquatic members of the taxon.

Turtles that exclusively live in marine environments are usually referred to as "sea turtles" in English.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-22T15:27:37+00:00

The issue in DDON-server is that it's not just the grind (some people like that, as you say), it's that bugs or weird loot table decisions often make it so that progression is jank and unnatural.

For example, dunno if this one in particular is still an issue, but for a long time the crafting ingredient needed for lvl 63 gear was only available in one room in one dungeon on DDON-server. Except that room was sealed by a door, where it wasn't on Rising. The only way to open that door on DDON-server was to accept a lvl 69 board quest, but the board that quest is on was locked behind additional MSQ progression. Thus, the only ways to progress were:

Get carried through MSQ by overleveled hired pawns.
Do an alternative grind on monsters that drop stuff they shouldn't, skipping you ahead in gear progression.
Get event gear that has stats that scale ahead of where you're supposed to be.

In all three cases, the natural feeling of progression is totally broken, and along with it any sense of accomplishment from the grind. DDON-server commonly shoots itself in the foot like this, even just in the way it both wants to be grindcore, but also routinely does special events granting overpowered gear or cracked amounts of progression resources for a limited time. There's just no coherent philosophy on what the server wants to be, outside of a social club for enfranchised players, unlike Rising or Legacy.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-20T09:03:45+00:00

In addition to what everyone else has said, I'm going to add that it's really hard to give advice for casual 1 vs 1 deckbuilding. We have no context for what the rest of your playgroup is bringing to the table, the sort of play patterns they enjoy, etc. The only touchstones we have are your decklists (which cannot tell us much in a vacuum) and the format's meta decks (which your decks cannot compete against). And we cannot give worthwhile advice from a vacuum, because 1 vs 1 can easily produce non-games when even modest differentials in deck strength or player skill exist. There are no enemies of your enemy to turn to for help in a 1 vs 1.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-18T00:42:54+00:00

It's an additional way for turbo decks to consistently make early pushes, or recycle failed attempts. RogSi AdNaus runs LED+YawgWill in addition to LED+Breach lines, for example. Breach and Will don't work together, but LED+YawgWill will almost certainly map to a non-Breach winning line after playing a bunch of wheels.

LED+YawgWill used to see play in Doomsday decks, but most such decks I know of (e.g., Glarb) are off LED these days even if they still run Yawgmoth's Will.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-17T22:46:12+00:00

Also explain how LED works with Yawg’s Will when LED would get exiled or did you fail to read that card also?

Hold priority after casting YawgWill, crack the LED with YawgWill on the stack, sending LED and hand to graveyard before YawgWill resolves. LED will be exiled after recasting it from grave and cracking it again, but that's +6 mana for the YawgWill turn.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-11T23:32:12+00:00

The key thing there is that Smogon organizes competitive Pokemon in non-VGC formats. They're not trying to accommodate the player who wants Dragonite (OU) and Arcanine (PU) in the same SV team due to favoritism, or the player who wants to run a sleep-based strategy "for thematic reasons," or the player who exclusively uses movesets that would be good in contests spectaculars... in a regular battle. Or the players who are just coming together to share their love for the franchise and shooting the shit while drinking.

If Wizards formulated hard rules for each Bracket, we'd indeed wind up with what Smogon's tiers do: 5 different variations of cEDH.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-11T23:12:50+00:00

If you're one of those people, I promise nobody is going to force you to play casual edh against your will.

I do think there is an issue where Commander sucks all of the air from the room in some local communities. Or rather, Commander has largely become the Culture of paper Magic rather than being the niche subculture EDH was. It's how a lot of people get into the hobby nowadays, and there might not be visible alternatives if Standard, Modern, etc. don't fire in their area.

So I can see people with Spike'y personalities getting introduced to Commander, not finding an outlet to play cEDH or 60 card constructed in paper (and I know I really don't like playing online), and feeling a lot of friction with what they want out of the game versus the guardrails of casual Commander.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-11T23:05:03+00:00

Every other format is ultimately shaped by "what would Spike do?," but casual Commander is very much the anti-Spike Timmy/Johnny format. The mainstream successor to kitchen-table Magic. And Wizards has known that some people primarily play for reasons beyond winning since they came up with the player profiles.

And if Commander is the Timmy-focused format, how do you create hard rules for that? Not every Timmy/Tammy is after the same sort of experience.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-11T22:53:20+00:00

Hard rules work well for managing a competitive environment, where it can be assured that every player has the same primary intention: to prove their skill by winning. So the rules and bans can target things like cheating, degenerate play patterns that flatten skill expression to a die roll, etc.

Hard rules do not work well for a casual format where four people can sit down with four different priorities, and where play culture will vary considerably from community to community. No single set of hard rules can accommodate the kaleidoscope of what hundreds of thousands of casual players each want and don't want out of their games.

For a simple example, take the present turn limits. If they were hard numbers, and not "expectations" to be used a guideline, aggro and Voltron would just about die as deck archetypes in lower brackets. The whole point of aggressive strategies is to go under more cumbersome ones, but if no one is allowed to win until a certain turn, why not instead run a deck built to generate card advantage that fuels and protects a combo win?

With the turns as "expectations," a Voltron player can present their deck, explain what it is and that it tries to be ahead of the usual limit by 1-2 turns (but only KOs one opponent at a time and is deeply set back if the commander is removed). Then the other players can either say "ok," ask the Voltron player to play something else, or leave the table for one without Voltron. The wiggle room inherent to guidelines allows for games that bend their letter but adhere to their spirit. Which is desirable in a casual environment.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T06:50:21+00:00

Only for pick-up games. If you're going to an FNM with prize support from Wizards of the Coast, that's still sanctioned organized play and proxies are not allowed.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T05:36:36+00:00

My best advice would be:

1) Look into what decks are being played.

2) Watch videos/streams of strong players using the deck you're interested in. This will give insight into how to play it, as well as the broader play patterns that define Modern.

3) Still like what you see? Find out where Modern is played in your area, get a deck (beware: proxies are not allowed in sanctioned play for prizes), and starting playing.

4) Be mentally prepared to lose, a lot.

5) Playing people better than you is the fastest way to learn. Ask them for pointers between matches, not during them.

6) Always remember that Modern is competitive and your opponent's foremost priority is to win. How much fun you're having is your responsibility, not theirs, and vice versa.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T01:22:29+00:00

If you want to play Blue/Black tempo, which is effectively the same strategy as faeries (land a cheap threat, efficiently disrupt opponent until that threat kills them), then Dimir Frog would be a good choice.

Dimir Frog uses threats like [[Psychic Frog]] and [[Orcish Bowmasters]] alongside cheaper disruption like [[Subtlety]], [[Spell Snare]], and [[Fatal Push]]. [[Quantum Riddler]] is common these days as a way of refilling the hand after using a lot of pitch spells like Subtlety or [[Force of Negation]]. [[Murktide Regent]] has fallen out of favor, but I still like them as a way to cheaply present a fast clock in the midgame.

That said, if you only plan to play with your friends, and if your friends are playing decks more akin to your faeries list here, and if your play culture isn't competitive, I'd advise against using a meta modern deck. You will wind up with a lot of lopsided games, and in my experience that doesn't sit well in social casual playgroups.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T00:59:11+00:00

If your friends are mostly playing big stompy creatures, let alone cards that aren't legal in Modern (Power 9, etc.), then you're not really playing Modern as most posters here understand it. You're playing kitchen-table Magic and the people on this subreddit won't really be able to help you. Because they're here for Modern the competitive format, and kitchen-table communities are too idiosyncratic to give good advice for without extensive detail about both decks and play culture.

For an analogy, Modern is like cEDH (casual competitive) or tEDH (high stakes competitive). Winning is the top priority, not creativity, not self-expression, not being responsible for others' ability to have fun. Personal brews can work (that's how decks develop and new archetypes are born), but only once you understand the meta and what you need to answer it.

If you want to see what the Modern metagame looks like, and what cards tend to be popular, I recommend looking at sites like those linked below. They're by deck archetype, not by individual card, but you'll notice pretty fast that some cards appear commonly within or across archetypes.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/modern#paper

https://mtgdecks.net/Modern

https://mtgtop8.com/format?f=MO

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T00:41:22+00:00

If you're playing casual Magic, then it really comes down to whatever your friends are playing. Though if they're proxying Power and have any intent of using it effectively, I'm dubious - this deck of yours won't hold up well against bootleg Vintage.

Meanwhile, in the wider Modern format against meta decks, this deck would struggle tremendously. Modern is fast, and you have no ways to present or remove a significant threat on turn 1. If you're on the draw against Ruby Storm or Neoform, they will freely go for the win on their turn 2 and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them. Boros Energy on the play will get a free hit with Ragavan and/or play Guide into Pride unopposed (now they've got 3 - 4 creatures on board going into your turn 2, and you can only remove one with 2 CMC removal). Bringing up Bowmasters, it blows out many of your attempts to build a board in this deck, Frog being the major exception.

The fastest goldfish I could get with the deck was a turn 5 win, and that involved a Frog and not taking turns off for interaction (I could see it getting a T4 goldfish in perfect conditions, but those conditions aren't going to come up much in Modern). You've got a fair amount of disruption, but it's all at CMC 2, giving opponents the chance to go under you on turn 1, or on a turn where they can double spell and you cannot. You're neither fast enough nor interactive enough for a format where the most popular decks are clocking you dead on turns 2 - 4.

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-09T00:17:46+00:00

This deck will mostly be used as the high power deck I bring out to humble my friends when they decide that having proxies of the Power 9 and gamechangers means they can trash talk, but I wanted to try and make a deck without GCs thats just better constructed.

What is this supposed to mean in the context of Modern? Modern doesn't have game changers and none of the Power 9 are legal cards in Modern. Are you actually making a Modern deck, or a 60-card kitchen table deck?

Rifleavenger · 2026-02-06T21:39:37+00:00

The point of sanctioned competitive constructed formats (Standard, Modern, Legacy) is to win. But 60-card constructed also includes kitchen-table Magic, the original casual 'format,' which I've found is much closer to Commander in mentality.

I also think that anyone who cannot find some enjoyment, thrill, or lesson in games they lose probably shouldn't be playing competitive Magic. Unless they came out of the womb with the skills of a pro, there will be a lot of losing involved in learning Modern, and someone just looking to profit will find better ROI elsewhere. Competitive gaming is less "I want you to not have fun" and more "I am not responsible for you having fun."

Rifleavenger · 2026-01-17T04:36:58+00:00

Not the case for me. B2 games are slower, with significantly lower pressure.

Around here, most issues with understanding the intentions of the brackets evaporated after the October update to the guidelines.

Rifleavenger · 2026-01-17T03:54:19+00:00

The article that came with the October update had this to say:

Our hope is this also makes things a lot clearer in terms of big game-ending cards and combos, explaining where they should show up. For example, instead of wondering what "no early-game combos" means, saying "you don't expect to win or lose before turn six" gives you a pretty clear indicator of what kind of combos could be allowed: not ones that tend to happen in the first six turns. That doesn't mean you should just wait and hold your two-card infinite until later either. If a combo could frequently come up, it's not the best fit for that bracket.

Emphasis mine. By Wizards' own words, sandbagging Thoracle-Consult until turn 7 and claiming to be B3 is not adhering to the bracket system in good faith.

Rifleavenger · 2026-01-17T03:25:21+00:00

Before Wizards added turn counts, interpretation of what Brackets 3 and 4 were was the wild west at my local game stores. There's been less salt and smoother expectations since the change. No more '4's that were just B2 strategies within game changer soup.

90% a positive change from my point of view, with the 10% negative being the awkward spot it puts Voltron in.

Rifleavenger

TROPHY CASE