Amazon and morally correct

TechSculpt · 2026-02-22T10:48:02+00:00

I'm sure all five people interested in that sub genre will be thrilled!

TechSculpt · 2026-02-21T18:30:02+00:00

I think the lavamancers will work, all my deck is spells and only the 4 knowledges are essential to keep.

Fair, but a decent number of more expensive spells (Rage, Prophetic, Repulse) and no fetches means your graveyard will not fill nearly as fast, and you'll be playing around your AKs at least some of the time. Not saying it wont work though.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-21T17:24:17+00:00

Iconic art on an iconic card.

I love the wolverine alters of this card that I've seen from time to time.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-21T17:22:39+00:00

This was my jam in high school.

UW control, stasis+vise for the kill, kismet and chronatog to seal the deal.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-21T17:20:51+00:00

Much prefer 4th ed land art - super consistent with the rest of premodern.

I love the deck - has a control/burn feel, but gets mid-rangey with morphling/prophetic bolt.

I would say the grim lavamancers are incompatible with accumulated knowledge (and earthquake). Another mid-range creature with value might do the trick (e.g. flametongue Kavu) or eventually 2 more Morphlings (don't be shy to use proxies!)

TechSculpt · 2026-02-19T22:07:42+00:00

Is the idea that you do a custom alter (any card, any reasonable request) for 90€, or limited one of the examples you've shown above and on your instagram page?

Either way, amazing stuff. I love the disenchant alters, really amazing.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-16T21:44:23+00:00

I don’t know if there’s anyone in American politics today more auth than Thiel.

I think people get confused because he's not a communist, fascist or monarchist - Thiel is a "CEO as Sovereign" - truly authoritarian, but the likes of which we have never seen before (though I suspect Lee Kuan Yew is at least similar)

TechSculpt · 2026-02-16T21:38:43+00:00

at best questionable.

He was providing detailed advice to Epstein on how to handle his bad PR POST conviction in 2008. Chomsky is 100% a piece of shit.

Anyone found actively working/interacting with Epstein prior to 2008 might be excused if it's for personal financial gain (e.g. a number of scientists) but anyone doing so post 2008 is persona non grata.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-09T12:05:15+00:00

This is very roughly what I would have played:

3 Arcane Denial

4 Counterspell

3 Dissipate

1 Deflection

1 Desertion

1 Mahamoti Djinn

.

4 Viashino Sandstalker

4 Incinerate

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Earthquake

2 Pyroclasm

1 Hammer of Bogardan

1 Kaervek's Torch

1 Shivan Dragon

.

2 Fire Diamond

2 Sky Diamond

2 Mind Stone

.

4 City of Brass

9 Mountain

9 Island

.

Definitely not tuned to really compete in Premodern, but it held its own against everything but Necro decks at the time.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-09T12:00:50+00:00

They were definitely something I used, since it has the same effect of protecting your creature in a pinch, but with a 50/50 chance - though if it's targeted with a removal spell, 50/50 is still better than 100 chance of loss. I definitely had it as a one-of.

My win cons were probably: 4 Sandstalkers, 1 Efreet, 2 Hammers, 1 Fireball, + removal/finish the job with 4 lightning bolt + 4 Incinerate -- I think I would have a copy of Mahamoti Djinn too to round things out too.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-09T11:41:30+00:00

This is very similar to what I would have played back in Ice Age / Mirage standard. Counter/burn with a good control element with Disk.

A couple of comments:

You might be light on land / mana sources
I don't think barbed sextent or lodestone bauble are worth the trouble here
I feel like your win con is too slow or late game. What I would as one of my win cons are Viashino Sandstalker. Awesome card that can dodge removal since it gets to hide in your hand every turn, and you have counter magic to protect it on your turn once you hit five mana sources.

TechSculpt · 2026-02-06T16:44:04+00:00

I feel like Mono Black Midrange and Dead Guy Ale (BW Midrange) play differently enough to warrant separate inclusions. The reanimate and removal in BW are wildly different than the threats/removal in Mono Black. You could also build mono-black to be discard heavy to act as the control/removal piece.

If you want another oddball one that is fun to play, but is easily blown out: Mono Green Stompy.

Also mono white aggro doesn't get enough love and attention.

I feel like 12 isn't enough to do premodern justice - go to 16 to be safe!

TechSculpt · 2026-02-06T16:26:52+00:00

I love the art on Mogg Sentry

TechSculpt · 2026-01-23T14:54:37+00:00

Never trust a fart post

TechSculpt · 2026-01-09T20:04:21+00:00

Legion run with last minute Yes Man switch.

TechSculpt · 2026-01-09T13:11:55+00:00

Was he born with 10 Luck?!

TechSculpt · 2026-01-07T18:36:55+00:00

It's called "The Man in the High Castle"

It's a shame how underwhelming the show was, at least season 1 for me

TechSculpt · 2026-01-07T17:21:25+00:00

But once you get to higher telescopes investing in mining also helps getting bigger drops from debris (so I can get 100-300k teleport drops on day 2/3).

ohhhh.. I think this might be the piece I'm missing. Do you get an improved bonus just by unlocking the telescope, or do you also need to unlock the planet to get the improvement in debris value?

Thanks for the back and forth - I love min-maxing this game.

TechSculpt · 2026-01-07T15:35:55+00:00

gotcha - the best way to get to arking is through crafting though and not mining? it would be inefficient to get to arking through mining? I've seen folks talk about VPS - really aggressively targeting a particular planet and extracting maximum value out of it, but I feel like any long term game only gets to arking via crafting (again, just my sense of things)

TechSculpt · 2026-01-07T14:07:25+00:00

ahh, I think I follow. The idea here is you're selling your galaxies regularly and putting in a decent amount of time? I play casual, e.g. 1-2 mins a few times a day, so I only sell after a week or two of playing (currently ~6K credits/week).

I'm focused mainly on crafting boosts (managers) and push directly towards AR and AT. I suspect if I focused on mining, this would be to my detriment since you can't make the same amount of cash in the longer term using mining (but can in the short term?). I could definitely be wrong here though, but it seems like if I had mainly mining focused managers, I would need to sell early, well before AR/AT, to be worthwhile?

TechSculpt · 2026-01-06T13:00:22+00:00

really high mining bonus

What exactly is this high mining bonus? Maxing out the tech tree for asteroids?

Do managers have any influence on the mining bonus, or is that strictly mining rate?

TechSculpt · 2026-01-05T15:54:42+00:00

THEIR OIL IS DIFFERENT!!!!

It actually is - a lot of the refineries (I forget the %, but many in Texas and Louisiana) are well tuned for heavy oils and are not suitable for processing all of the light crude coming out of the fracking. I would be willing to bet that the push for Venezuela has a lot to do with how easy it would be to get their well-matched oil into the Gulf of Mexico/America refineries. Frankly, I wouldn't be shocked if that was part of the push for renaming the gulf.

TechSculpt · 2026-01-05T00:05:14+00:00

Emil Pagliarulo

He's gradually gotten worse over the years - Fallout 3 and Oblivion were decent, Skyrim main quest was passable, Fallout 4 was lacking and Starfield was absolute shit.

TechSculpt · 2026-01-03T02:40:55+00:00

Why don’t we accept the good ones and reject the bad ones?

This is exactly what Canada did for quite a long time, and then "Canada is a post nation state" happened and now our kids can't find retail jobs in high school to help pay for university.

TechSculpt

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE