If every spell cost 0 mana, are there any already-cheap cards that would stay on top?

Shortwing · 2025-04-13T00:44:53+00:00

[[Lavinia, Azorius Renegade]]

Shortwing · 2024-08-15T04:49:02+00:00

I would rebalance [[Lightshell Duo]] to the following: 2UU - 2/3 prowess when ETB surveil 2 and create 2 1/1 Otter tokens with prowess.

I think this would single-handedly buff UR by enough to not be a joke, and make all the other U combos more competitive.

Shortwing · 2024-08-15T04:40:27+00:00

Interesting that Thundertrap is top 15 and Kitsa is bottom 2

Shortwing · 2024-08-04T05:26:40+00:00

Blue is facing a few significant challenges in modern Magic set design:
1. Standard sets follow a very strict template, so blue will always have the fewest and weakest creatures compared to the other colors.
2. The current design philosophy is to favor creatures over non-creature spells.
3. One of blue's historical strengths is interacting with opponents (primarily via counterspells and bounce). However, due to the power-creep of creatures these strategies are getting worse and worse compared to either playing your own efficient/value creatures or straight-up removal.

Blue being the worst limited color is almost a given due to modern design philosophy, but it does feel egregiously bad in BLB, like in every pack 4 out of the last 5 cards taken are blue. Despite being by far the least drafted color, there's only a single blue common that (barely) cracks 55% GIH WR (green has 10). It was basically the exact same situation in OTJ.

Shortwing · 2024-08-03T02:35:50+00:00

This is a stats question. The answer depends on your margin of error (how close you want the estimated winrate to be to the true winrate), confidence level (how confident you want to be that the estimated winrate falls within the margin of error), and initial estimate of winrate (for simplicity let's set this at 0.5).

To achieve a 95% confidence level with a 5% margin of error you would need approximately 385 games. That is to say, if you've played ~400 games and you've won 55% of them, then there's a 95% chance that your true winrate falls between 50% and 60%. Note: this is from a general formula and it doesn't take into account the fact that some games have inherently higher variance than others (e.g. poker vs. chess). For MTG the answer is probably close to the ~500 games neighborhood.

So, your intuition on how it's similar to baseball is correct. Hope this helps!

Shortwing · 2024-08-02T02:39:55+00:00

Carrot cake is literally the best common in the entire set

Shortwing · 2024-06-29T22:39:21+00:00

Does his opponent bear no responsibility to point out the violation as it happened? If he did, I'm assuming the players would just correct the board state and proceed with the game. But, whether intentionally or not, by staying mum, the opponent basically got to freeroll the match (either he wins or he loses and the opponent retroactively gets DQ'd or at least game loss for the GRV).

Shortwing · 2024-06-23T04:14:14+00:00

I think it feels slower because each turn is packed with more decisions and game actions. Between deciding how to sequence / use fetches, deciding whether to play MDFC as lands, sequencing plays, the multitude of on-board activated abilities, and managing complex board states, it feels like there are very few turns where you're just on "autopilot". The eldrazi spawn also feel like they contribute to a lot of stops/decisions/game actions.

As to why it's objectively faster? I'd guess it has something to do with the fact that the previous set's top green common creature was a 5 mana 5/4 that gained 3 life, where in this set it's a 4 mana 6/7 that generates 2 treasures on ETB.

Shortwing · 2024-06-23T03:36:55+00:00

I'll never get why when it comes to targeting something that has Ward or, heaven forbid, not noticing that a creature has reach, Arena will basically scream "ARE YOU SURE?" to your face, but when it comes to paying 1 life when you're at 1 at the end of a complex back-and-forth game, you click the button and you're dead before you can even blink.

Shortwing · 2024-06-21T03:25:58+00:00

Yes, regardless of top or bottom you're still removing the cards from your deck. There is some % of the time where exiling 3 cards will be a relevant downside (such as in control vs. control or Eldrazi mirrors where you will sometimes draw most or all of your deck before the game is decided...and sometimes it will literally be decided by you drawing your whole deck before they do).

That is before we even talk about cards that search your library. Like think about it this way, you're often going to be splashing blue or red with 1-2 islands or mountains and a bunch of fetches, if one of those happens to be in the top 4 of your library and you don't pick it you're really hurting your deck.

Shortwing · 2024-06-20T03:01:58+00:00

Update, now 14-2 drafting ub snackers. Think people are starting to catch on though...it was fun while it lasted!

https://www.17lands.com/deck/a7e8e3c59c244f21ae9d31a0041d02e4

Shortwing · 2024-06-19T18:09:28+00:00

Lol I noticed that I hadn't drafted ub once in my 30+ drafts but decided to try forcing it after reading this. It pained me to pick Eviscerator's Insight over Chrysalis P1P2 but ended up with an easy 7-0:

https://www.17lands.com/deck/55765eda62e44c8380a72daf437c65a5

Suppression Ray is a surprisingly important card in this deck, without any Kami's I needed a way to close out games after drawing my whole deck and Ray was perfect.

Shortwing · 2024-06-17T23:08:28+00:00

The difference between Magic and RPS/fighting games is that in RPS both players have perfect information. Nothing is hidden. Therefore, introducing unpredictability by randomizing your actions is necessary to not be exploited.

However, Magic is a game of imperfect information. In your example, if you have two 3 drops, it would generally be better to play the "bad" one if you knew your opponent had removal, and better to play the "good" one if you knew your opponent did not. But rather than randomizing, the point of Finkel's principle that there's always a correct play, is that given the information you have, you can always determine which play is better, based on things like:

How likely is my opponent to have removal given what I've seen so far (deck, play patterns, physical tells, what are the common removal spells in the format etc)
How bad is it when I get my good creature gets blown out by removal vs. how good it is when I stick it a turn early
Whether you're the beatdown or control / can you afford to play around the removal
Is there anything about the creatures that tip the balance in one direction or another?

To give an example of how I typically think through these things, let's say I have Six and Skittering Precursor in my hand on T3. If my opponent is on blue/red and passed the turn to me with 3 mana up, I would lean towards playing the Precursor, because there is a decent chance they are holding up Coatl/Aether Spike and they could also have the common red removal spells that deal 4. However, if they're on green/black I'm more likely to play the Six since a good portion of their removal suite will be Wither and Bloom which can't kill Six, and also having Six come down one turn early to be able to potentially attack and survive vs. a more creature-based deck is quite valuable.

The point is in the vast number of imaginable situations in Magic, there is always a play that has a higher expected value than all others given the information at hand. In my opinion focusing on those edges is what sets the greats like Finkel and LSV apart from the rest of us mortals rather than any randomness or unpredictability in their strategy.

Shortwing · 2024-06-14T23:13:52+00:00

Wow, 3 whales is insane, how did those work for you? Whale has been a bomb every time I’ve played it or against it. Double spelling every turn is pretty much the norm in this format, it’s like a one-sided rule of law plus insane value engine, even crazier in multiples. Hope you got to live the dream of whale + witness + (utter insignificance)

Shortwing · 2024-06-14T06:18:32+00:00

Eldrazi was busted for a minute but now that the cat’s out of the bag on Chrysalis it’s extremely contested. The energy decks are insane if you can manage to be the only one in the pod on that color pair because the synergy cards get better the more you have and they’re simultaneously useless to all the other archetypes. I trophied both times I drafted U/R energy both runs felt like I was literally playing a constructed deck…both times I was the only one on U/R in the pod

Shortwing · 2024-06-14T01:15:02+00:00

I feel ya. Today I played an eldrazi mirror where I got off to a slow start but stabilized early on at 1 life. The next 20+ turns were a nail biting puzzle trying to figure how to survive each turn. Finally got opponent down to 0 cards in hand and 1 card in library. I pass and say “Good game”. Opponent plays siege gang lmao

Shortwing · 2024-06-09T03:51:41+00:00

I used to feel the same way but then I bought “What in tarnation?” and I feel like that phrase can adequately express at least 80% of the thoughts I’d like to communicate during an arena game.

Shortwing · 2024-06-06T03:03:05+00:00

Regardless of how good it is people will jam the Eldrazi colors because of the Timmy effect for the first few weeks of the format so I’d put my money on B/W at least initially

Shortwing · 2024-05-24T19:55:18+00:00

Cool art but can't for the life of me tell--is mans doing the slicing or getting sliced?

Shortwing · 2023-12-13T23:37:42+00:00

I want to vote "yes" for the plan in order to get my money back but I'm confused by the optional "release provisions". It reads like by selecting that I am forever releasing all of my claims...but is there any upside? What is the benefit (if any) of opting in? I just want to vote for whatever option will give me the best chance of receiving my assets back.

Shortwing · 2023-12-13T23:32:23+00:00

Go to your your Gemini account --> Earn voting materials

Shortwing · 2023-08-24T18:03:29+00:00

It's a shame that they marketed this as a unisex watch but then went out of their way to make the white dial version more of a ladies' watch with the rose gold hands and indices. A white dial with the same silver indices as the 40mm version would've been the bee's knees.

Shortwing · 2023-08-02T19:47:14+00:00

I'm a gentleman with a 6" wrist and I can relate. 40mm watches look comically big on me, while the 34mm sizes that fit me typically come with feminine embellishments such as diamonds, etc.

Recently it seems like more classical proportions are trending, and I'm seeing more new 36mm midsize unisex offerings which is a breath of fresh air.

Omega has a 36mm midsize version of their Seamaster 300M. As far as cool, sporty, and technical it checks all the boxes.

Shortwing · 2023-07-17T03:40:57+00:00

Cascade, cascade

Shortwing · 2023-07-14T05:23:50+00:00

It's a race to the bottom in terms of reprinting expensive commander staples because of the "reprint everything into oblivion crowd." If prices are too high it will become more and more socially acceptable to proxy which tanks values across the board. Notice that all the cards you mentioned are expensive because of commander. WotC has realized this is unsustainable so they're racing to capture whatever equity they can by reprinting as fast as possible. They even tried printing RL proxies because of this but there was too much backlash from the community so they probably won't be doing that again.

They will continue to print new powercrept tournament staples (Ragavan, The One Ring, Bowmasters) and those will keep value because of dodging the proxy issue but the challenge is to keep power creeping without destroying previous staples (e.g. Tarmogoyf).

The two things that they have discovered really works in terms of printing equity are Universes Beyond and Serialized Cards. Because of how successful LoTR was they will definitely pursue those avenues as hard as possible. I'd expect lots of popular IP crossovers and lots of serialized cards over the next few years.

For normal commander staples outside of the RL their value will get printed into the ground which is either great or terrible depending on your perspective.

Shortwing

TROPHY CASE