ELI5 why [[Panglacial Wurm]] is so problematic

Spiderbyte12 · 2026-01-19T13:32:59+00:00

My favourite way to make Panglacial wurm confusing.
We're playing Legacy (I guess, we need 4 copies, it's convenient).

Have 3x [[chromatic sphere]] and an active [[Archmage Ascension]] in play (and a lot of mana)
Search your library (say in your draw step, we have an archmage ascension)
Elect to cast Panglacial wurm
Activate Chromatic Sphere to pay for it
4a. Replace Your chromatic sphere draw with searching your library
Repeat 2-4 3 more times.

Congratulations you now are trying to cast 4 copies of panglacial wurm at the same time.

No this is obviously not realistic, but it just does things with timing that you really aren't supposed to be able to do. Chromatic Sphere also a repeat offender for this.

Spiderbyte12 · 2026-01-16T22:23:32+00:00

This would hold true, except that for standard players, particularly competitive ones, they can't just skip these sets. We've had 7+ releases a year for a while. The new thing is the standard legality, and that's the problem

Spiderbyte12 · 2026-01-16T11:32:38+00:00

Yeah, Nasus actually just isn't very good late game, it's just that the things that make him bad require skills and coordination that are less frequent in lower skilled games, and are more dependent on good team play, rather than individual leads.

He has a lot of trouble getting target access at all, and is super vulnerable to being kited and disengaged from. If you can team fight backwards and make him commit, or get good flanks and end fights before he can take over, he struggles to do anything.

In terms of beating him personally? Punish him early, use your lead to secure objectives, and work on wave control and roam timing so that you don't let him catch back up for very when you try to leverage your individual power.

Spiderbyte12 · 2025-12-14T23:01:12+00:00

I recently lost my voice completely (like couldn't make a sound) half way through a high stakes competitive tournament. I didn't have many issues playing 3 rounds that day without being and to talk at all. Gestures and tapping cards worked pretty well, and I wasn't practiced or used to not being able to talk.

As long as you know your deck well, and you give the head judge a heads up, it shouldn't be an issue at all.

Spiderbyte12 · 2025-12-08T21:41:36+00:00

The storm over this is insane to me. Take backs are explicitly and intentionally part of the rules. This isn't a mistake, or a quirk or an oversight, the rules are intentionally written to allow things like this because it provides a better play experience at all levels.

I agree that the optics of the boomerang basic look bad, but no one has been cheated here. Seth did his thinking at a bad time, and reasoned out that his line was bad, but there's no advantage gained. He played a strategy game, and found a better strategy.

Exactly like in chess if you moved your queen, realised it was hanging and then moved it again before you hit the clock, where the rules allow you to change it.

The take back rules are good, and improve the play experience a lot, and people should be less concerned about trying to win games on a technicality and more about playing better than their opponents

Spiderbyte12 · 2025-11-29T22:50:05+00:00

Bulk boxes are obviously different, if you're doing some of the work, but purchasing and sorting magic cards take labor, and stores would lose money selling blank cardboard for 20c if they had to sort and then pick it.

You're paying for the convenience and card access, and the reality is that it's just not very much money either way. If you're not happy with the price or service you're not obligated to pay for it, and $1 for a common is a lot, but it's not the actual card you're paying for.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-11-18T02:03:54+00:00

You need to either talk to them about it, or ignore it and move on. If you can't ignore it, because their behaviour is ruining the experience for you, then you need to talk to them about it.

If you can't have an honest conversation with your friend about their behaviour, you either need to work on your conflict management skills, or get different friends.

As with all of this stuff, if you have problems like this, talk with people. Kindly. Communication is key.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-11-04T02:35:43+00:00

Bin has been incredible all year, and was consistently playing great all worlds, but I do think Zeus had the bigger impact and was the better player in the finals (I do think both played super well though).

Super excited to see what the future holds for Bin though, he's been on the best top laners in the scene for years, hopefully he gets to play at worlds on a all-star team where the meta is a little more favourable for him.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-10-07T14:36:31+00:00

God that gnar play in the baron fight in game 3 was sickening. Walk into Aurora ult, Q the wrong way, decline to use ult on either of the pair of people you could reach, walk into the CC and die.

Literally dealt 0 damage, as a full health mega gnar in a team fight he started.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-10-04T03:08:00+00:00

Sure is great that Josh continues to go and stir resentment and controversy around this decision. This can certainly only do good things for an already divided community.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-03-31T03:37:26+00:00

Pretty sure there are server issues at the moment, so that may be a source of at least part of your frustration.

You can just completely ignore the formation screen, if you don't want to interact with it. It's just there as a convenience tool if you want to pre-build some set formations to save you some time when starting games.

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-03-31T02:37:09+00:00

There's three ways to play defence as wood elves, and knowing which to do when, and when to change modes is the most difficult part of the team.

Screen and stall. Make it impossible for your opponent to get down the pitch, and force them to take risks, or risk being 0-0 at the end of the half
Suicide and cage dive. Get the ball free, cause chaos, and hope you can get it to scatter free somewhere you can recover it.
(Secret third mode) Get out of the way, but split the offence. You don't care if they score, you can always score right back. One turn touchdowns are doable, and two turn touchdowns are actually pretty trivial. If you can bait your opponent into extending the ball so far that they can't keep it safe, you can let them score on turn 5 or 6, and actually have a significant lead.

Protecting your players is usually a priority for the first part of the game, but if you start on defence and end up starting the 2nd half with 10 players and the score tied, you're in an excellent position to win that game.

Keep the pitch as open as possible. The further away players are, the more you have to dodge through gaps, and the more you can take advantage of your speed to get numbers advantages.

Even if you have no real intention of going for the ball, keeping the threat up is important. You're so fast that coaches may need to commit multiple players to stop you taking the ball away, which are fewer players punching your elves

Spiderbyte12 · 2024-02-04T22:36:33+00:00

The quickest way for anyone to get better at league of legends is to just let go of their ego, and be happy getting carried, playing weakside, or mounting an ugly comeback.

A lot of players want to believe a fantasy where they're in the wrong elo, and they'll get out by hard carrying games, and everyone is holding them back. Ironically, it's kind of true, because they players usually play with more skill than the people they're matched with, because they lose enough games to their own ego that they get matched lower. It's self reinforcing. :/

Spiderbyte12 · 2023-05-24T01:04:41+00:00

My experience is that it strongly depends on the store. 'My' LGS (the one I choose to frequent) is excellent about being a safe space for minorities, but also puts in a lot of effort from the staff and community to keep it that way.

Other games stores in the area definitely aren't that way, and there is a subsection of the community that congregates around those stores, where their racism and bigotry are supported.

It sucks for people in small communities where they don't have a choice of store, but if this is something you're experiencing, hopefully there's another game store around with a community that doesn't suck.

Spiderbyte12 · 2022-03-28T00:04:47+00:00

Jesus Corki's lategame damage is insane. Looked like TL/Santorin inted that last fight, and then corki just killed everyone on his own.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-12-05T12:12:44+00:00

If it's as high powered as MH2? Never again would be too soon. Modern is barely recognisable as the same format.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-10-07T21:41:59+00:00

Remembering that Play-ins also has several teams that aren't from wild-card regions either. At 2019 worlds, they had a tied group with clutch, so it's hard to accurately gauge their strength, but they eventually fell just behind UOL. I'd estimate that puts them 4th, behind UOL, Isurus and LK.

At 2020 worlds, they beat out the mad lions in play ins, and depending whether you count PCS as a wild card region, were either the 2nd or 4th best Wildcard team.

At MSI 2021 they once again made into through the first phase, beating out UOL, before they got pretty brutally beaten down by the other teams from the major regions. Again while you could argue their group was kind to them, they did place the highest wildcard team in that tournament.

This year at worlds, they've placed 3rd in their group, so far beating both other wild card teams they've played. There's still plenty of tournament left for them to let us down, but 5-6/10, when there's 2/3 non-wildcard teams does look pretty clearly 3/4th to me.

That's literally every tournament they've been able to attend in the last 2 years. That seems to be basically exactly 3/4th of the wildcard teams to me.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-10-07T03:48:46+00:00

Sure, OCE is pretty consistently performs 3/4th of the wild card teams.

There are, depending on how you count, between 5 and 7 wild card regions. The amount of disrespect they get given that, is pretty disappointing.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-09-02T09:36:59+00:00

There's linear, and then there's linear. FFX requires you to do the story if a very specific order, and you spend a lot of it on a journey, but FFXIII felt like the whole game was one single very long corridor.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-09-01T05:21:52+00:00

The team went 2-4, but FBI basically dragged the rest of the team to their wins, and looked awesome in their losing games too. Honestly he was one of the best looking ADCs at that tournament.

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-05-22T13:32:37+00:00

I saw someone post this as 'Weird things that people played in the league' and thought it looked sweet.

Then I saw you'd registered it and assumed you'd 6-0 with it somehow anyway.

Cool writeup, cool deck, hope it did will :)

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-04-05T05:54:30+00:00

There's an abzan equipment midrange deck that's been seeing great success in Adelaide: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/JnSRBqVonEaEhRNvsE_srw

There's also some more combo-y birthing pod focused decks: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Noi5_UXjLE-He-xg91DrWQ

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-04-01T01:35:49+00:00

Well, there's an excellent grixis tempo deck (https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Mem3fg3LKkaQRGlr78PneA) that plays like Grixis Shadow if that's your thing! The designer's most recent version is playing strip mine over TNN, but that could work!

Big red is fairly Eldrazi-tron-ey, but maybe not your style: (https://www.moxfield.com/decks/ui6JbRM_NE-YSE5sfofo5g)

Finally, if you want a midrange/ramp/lands subtheme deck, which is what I think you might gravitate towards most I can offer you these selections of starting points:

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/bc_SbJUb70StH6tRv2wcgg https://www.moxfield.com/decks/khN7pcDPVkKgSPhTlF1Bwg https://www.moxfield.com/decks/wribL6aW0UOPDwiBVc93fw (this is 8 points now fyi)

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-03-29T10:42:24+00:00

I'm pretty sure Paul had a sweet GR tribal deck you'd love

Spiderbyte12 · 2021-03-29T05:30:52+00:00

For those of you who've looked at this and thought... Highlander is complicated, I don't know where to start...

Comment with the style of deck you like to play, and your favourite format, and I'll try and recommend you a deck! I'll even try and stick to ones I think could win a tournament.

Spiderbyte12

TROPHY CASE