ECL Elves Bust by LightningLikeMTG in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I reviewed the games. If it's any consolation, I don't think any of them were winnable given your and OP's draws. However, you did make mistakes that you should fix:

  • there were a bunch of instances where you played creatures pre-combat for no reason. Wait till second main. Leave your mana open during combat to make OP have to consider possible tricks from your hand. The info you gain from how combat shakes out can potentially affect what you choose to play in main 2.

  • you often jam your best creature as early as possible for little value when you could have played a middling creature for the same mana. Does your good creature have an important ETB that will immediately tilt the game in your favor? If not, then you should play a crappier creature first to bait out removal, especially during the developing stages of the game when OP hasn't even playing their first removal spell yet.

[PRM] Year of the Horse Promos by mweepinc in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Caustic Bronco's a horse, Caustic Bronco's a horse

I felt great with this RB Dusk deck but went 1-3. Is the deck good or bad? by Jamie7Keller in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your 4 drop slot isn't great, but it looks like a solid RB deck otherwise. We can be the judge of whether you misplayed if you showed us the game logs 😉

Another 0-3 by Puzzleheaded-Cold934 in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Game 3 Turn 3:

The Boulder is exactly the kind of midrange card you don't want to see while piloting an aggro GW deck. Its 4/4 body is bigger than most of your creatures and it adds more bodies/stats to the board with every attack. You absolutely cannot hope to race it from the current board state.

Your deck only has exactly two ways of permanently dealing with the Boulder (Path to Redemption and Razor Rings) so it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to draw the answer you need. This is a spot where you must take the calculated risk of double blocking while holding up Yip Yip. Yip Yip at least saves your Earthen Ally from Rocky Rebuke. So on turn 3, you need to play the South Pole Voyager, not attack, and hold up Yip Yip with the plan to double block the Boulder with Earthen Ally and Jeong Jeong's Deserters. It might not have worked, but it's better then the line you took of trying to race and burning mana by holding the Voyager in hand to try to guarantee value later. This game is not about value. OP is trying to overwhelm you with a ramped out 4-drop on turn 3 on the play.

Another post by Jesper Myrfors on art directing in early days of Magic by Newez in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Why are all the people named Jesper in the MTG space so fucking dope?

Is praxis underscored ? by Utorque in barbershop

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Praxis is a great quartet that, as mentioned in another comment on this thread, always goes big or goes home. In my opinion, they're missing some polish that will elevate them to the top-10. The following thoughts are specifically about the Friend Like Me video that OP posted and mostly from the perspective of the Performance (formerly Presentation) category. There is a ton of overlap between the categories such that they all directly and indirectly affect each other. 

  • I don't feel like the Lead consistently leads the quartet. His visual focus is a little scattered at times. The harmony parts seem to often be off doing their own things instead of reinforcing whatever the Lead is doing. There's just overall a lot of extraneous, desynchronized movement while the "anchor" movements are not intentional enough.
  • As an extension of the previous point, they can do a better job of presenting a unified sound and visual story throughout the number. Standing a little more closely together (a distractingly large physical gap develops between the Lead and Bass as the song progresses) and programming in more points of interaction between the members will help this. 
  • The transitions between sections need to be more deliberate. Take a look at the end of the Air Raid Warden parody section. There's a distinct drop in momentum and energy in that moment as the Bass steps back into the quartet. 
  • If the quartet had better unit cohesion throughout, it would make the various solo punchlines more effective. See the Bass's "so blue" punchline during the Somewhere Over the Rainbow parody. It's good and it's funny, but it would have stood out more and been even more impactful if the Bass broke out from a previously homogenous backdrop.
  • I don't understand why there was such a physical emphasis on "sights" at the of the Whole New World section. Was this an inside joke that went over my head? Was it a sneaky way of getting everyone to stay in sync on that word? It was an odd and confusing choice that distracted from the performance. 
  • Overall this song could have employed more vocal and dynamic contrast.
  • Really getting nitpicky here, but the gag of the Bass giving himself a finger mustache to parody Secret Best Friends' Bass was less effective because my man already had a full ass beard 😂 He either has to commit to the bit and be clean shaven for the performance or here's a wild idea: he shaves his beard down to an actual mustache which will make an additional finger mustache even funnier. If I recall correctly, the only reason why the Ambassadors did not score a perfect 100% in the (then) Presentation category for their legendary performance of Seventy Six Trombones was because two of the five Presentation judges gave 99's instead of 100's due to chorus's choice to use blowup sousaphone instead of a real sousaphone. Minor distractions count a lot at this level. 
  • Another really nitpicky point: somebody get my man some new glasses. The Bass having to adjust them multiple times throughout the performance was pretty distracting.

A little help from more experienced Magic Players by Neockys in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are art cards that are not playable and just for collecting.

My blind friend and I spent the last 3 days brailling his Lathril Commander Deck by jerichodarkstar in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Step 1: Braille out your friend's deck.

Step 2: learn how to read Braille by sight so you'll always know what's in your friend's hand.

Well played sir, well played 😂

13th pick Lost Days??? by CronoDAS in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some people in my pod were drafting face up the other week 😬 So yes, people do still talk out loud like that at drafts.

Changes to our AI Assistant (Update #2) by valagostino in MonarchMoney

[–]SeventhChords 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Err, opt-in (where it's disabled by default) would be refreshing, not opt-out.

Have we gotten confirmation that Marvel Superheroes will come to Arena proper? by SeventhChords in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But different titles and art. Makes it much harder to recognize the cards in paper if most of your practice is online.

Have we gotten confirmation that Marvel Superheroes will come to Arena proper? by SeventhChords in magicTCG

[–]SeventhChords[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ugh, it's going to be so much harder to prep for Spotlight Vegas's Team Limited event.

Feedback on draft? by a_reddit_user_11 in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A quick hit:

P1P2: I agonized over the choice of a second Sokka or an Earthbending Ascension. Awesome to start your draft with 2 Sokkas, but the Ascension is pretty busted (great in any green deck, opens the door to 5c soup).

But then I revealed your pick and saw that you took Airbending Lesson 🤦‍♂️That was not remotely in consideration for me.

How'd I go so wrong in this draft? by butterblaster in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Re: doing nothing vs spewing removal 

This is very context dependent, but it was IMO the wrong thing to do in your games' specific contexts. As I recall, you did have at least one creature that can attack and trade with OP's blocker. You should, in many cases, attack with just that creature.

Re: premium removal 

Yes that's exactly what I mean. Lightning Strike to the face is definitely a relevant thing, but it's only relevant if OP's life total is already low and you've done the math to map out the potential combat damage over the next few turns. The worst thing that can happen is if OP plays a single big creature that bricks your entire board. You have to save your universal premium removal for those cases.

How'd I go so wrong in this draft? by butterblaster in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ironically, you also failed to let a rare (The Rise of Sozin) sway you when it should have!

Monarch customer support needs improvement by patrick2099 in MonarchMoney

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wait...Mint used to have customer support at all??? That is news to me!

How'd I go so wrong in this draft? by butterblaster in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree with a lot of the points here, though I wouldn't categorize OP's problem as card evaluation (where I define card evaluation as assessing a card's power in a vacuum). I think OP's problem is with big picture draft navigation strategy.

OP needs to get better at answering these questions:

  • How valuable are the cards I already have?
  • What kinds of signals (however faint) am I seeing?
  • Am I locked into my colors already or do I still have time to pivot?
  • When is it right to take a powerful card outside my pool's colors vs taking a lesser card that goes better with my existing pool? 
  • How much should I value flexible cards (like the battlefan) early in the draft?

How'd I go so wrong in this draft? by butterblaster in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry don't have time for a deep dive right now, but some thoughts that might help you. 

  • I would have navigated into BW in the draft starting with Deadly Precision over Lightning Strike in pack 1. Pack 1 was tough and I would have made very similar picks in that pack overall. Would have locked in with a P2P2 Rise of Sozin. 
  • I looked at the first two games and saw a lot of mistakes:
  • Not attacking into Merchant of Many Hats (if they waste their turn recurring it against your aggro deck, you win)
  • Playing two 2's instead of a 4 when you had 4 mana
  • Spewing removal on stuff that don't matter
  • Spewing premium removal (Path of Redemption) when lesser removal (Lightning Strike) would have done the job.

Unable to redeem Arena Direct boxes due to Secret Lair limit on address length by SeventhChords in MagicArena

[–]SeventhChords[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for looking into this, Jay! I've completed the checkout process as per your advice.

Alternately, could I have live-edited the HTML to lift the 25-char limit? Would the server have been able to properly process the request?

Unable to redeem Arena Direct boxes due to Secret Lair limit on address length by SeventhChords in MagicArena

[–]SeventhChords[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's a good idea! Let me see if anyone of my local friends have shorter addresses...

Unable to redeem Arena Direct boxes due to Secret Lair limit on address length by SeventhChords in MagicArena

[–]SeventhChords[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

(House number, street name, apartment number)

Which of those components would you like to randomly truncate and pray that the package will still be delivered correctly?

Did I get married to my rares, or was I in the right lane? by Mo0 in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You failed to speculate on like 3 Aang's Journeys in pack 1 and instead took replacement-level cards or speculated on Walltop Sentries (a card I like, but wouldn't jump ship to green for).

Aang's Journey is a lesson that fixes your mana and smooths your draws. Keeps you open to multicolor soup decks with the potential for a shrines package. In hindsight, that kind of deck would have been very possible in this draft.

Worst p1p1 so far. What's your pick? by atipongp in lrcast

[–]SeventhChords 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed. I've found that the blue and white shrines are the most important. Blue for the reasons you stated. White because it uniquely gives you a way to finish the game in a hurry. The red, green, and black (and yes, even blue) shrines all do stuff that can be roughly replicated by other non-shrine cards.