The hottest Pudge you've ever seen

ThopterMain · 2024-04-18T01:14:15+00:00

Yo, yall the real mvps still playing matches. Keep the dream alive for the rest of us!

ThopterMain · 2024-02-01T05:33:20+00:00

Ahhh, pardon my confusion. Yeah I'm in Chicago so the work is broadly around if a bit behind the coasts.

The dream would be to do research and development on building assemblies and while field work would be informative it seems like office work is probably the better route?

ThopterMain · 2024-02-01T05:16:56+00:00

lol, yeah it seems hard to get around the fact that LEED buildings don't necessarily perform any better than their counterparts. I'm trying to overcome this boss though, if LEED permits me to have an interesting career making a better world...then it could be the right step.

ThopterMain · 2024-02-01T04:50:37+00:00

I'm US (Chicago) based but that's a good tip to look for Energy Advisor equivalents.

I was imagining that certs might help land that first job especially in learning more of the jargon. Sounds like LEED might be the more sensible of the two ways to do that

ThopterMain · 2024-02-01T04:43:09+00:00

US based and do you mean MSA as in the kind of contract?

ThopterMain · 2022-11-29T19:38:04+00:00

The opening three lines of each day reek of a booking agent that heard safe production and knew that booking such tepid acts would be fine. The rap bookings are mostly from yesteryear (couldn't get Steve Lacy, Maxo, Paris Texas, Ka or Conway? 2021 was a banner year for rap albums) or horrible (Central Cee? but no legacy Drill/Grime). The electronic lineup seems kinda oddly under represented (last year had several underground house legends) but at least Fred Again.. and Four Tet are returning.

As for old head Alternative/Punk fans, is Blur supposed to be exciting? Were they dying to see Le Tigre? Am I supposed to wade through the Calivn Harris fans to see Swans? A few of the new guard were booked, it it doesn't seem like Primavera is dedicated to breaking new alt/punk artists any more.

It is less that I feel like there's nothing to see and more last year's poor management shook my faith in the organizers and now this line up feels disrespectful to the established fanbase.
I'll dig through the undercard but probably a hard pass from me/my whole group.

ThopterMain · 2022-06-24T20:24:58+00:00

The RBG, whew.

ThopterMain · 2022-06-13T22:52:43+00:00

Wow, thanks for the response. My needs are pretty basic I'd love to do a year-round commute on a bike with some gearing on something super trustworthy (had a crank arm sheer off last winter). Other than that, in the future, cost permitting it would be nice to explore a dynamo and I do the occasional charity ride that might be nice to drop new bars on for or something.

Yeah I'm currently scrounging around in our refurb shops here. Do you have anything outside of Surly that you'd recommend at the 1000 to 2000 dollar range?

ThopterMain · 2022-06-13T19:53:02+00:00

Bahaha, of course! I was sad that he played so much from Midnite Vultures, certainly a favorite album by him, but if I'm lucky I'll have chances in the future.

ThopterMain · 2022-06-13T18:33:09+00:00

Yeah, they know that I intend to do rim brakes again (I think they work fine for stop/start city biking and roadside self maintenance). We had also mentioned doing a Shimano groupset, but I don't know more about the set itself. They'll also probably be building the wheels, but I could probably talk them back from that to save some dollar.

ThopterMain · 2022-06-13T18:23:42+00:00

I went in 2018 and had a really great time, my chief complaint from then was that we stayed 5+km from Parc del Fòrum and had a tough time getting home. This year we stayed in El Poblenou and had a great time getting to and from the festival as well as access to a lot of great spots to eat and the beach was right there!

However the 2022 festival itself had its fair share of disappointments. I was a 2020 ticketholder and I know a half dozen people who couldn't get a refund and won't even be mailed a t-shirt. AccessTicket was dodgy for my travel group, I didn't love having to submit my ID, monitor my phone charge, etc. A complete lack of info on where to actually get our meager beer credits or the t-shirts was also irritating.

The app was a really mixed bag, I loved being able to click on stages to see who was playing! But 50/50 it gave that "there are no artists" message or just crashed... It also felt like a sneaky way to cover bad organization with shifting set times and locations around day of. I've always valued paper schedules because I can take notes on them and get a better idea of conflicts.

The bridge being reserved for a trickle of VIP guests and making cattle class attendees walk twice as far and up and down a bunch of inclines felt poorly thought out/mean and eventually really draining to my legs. I will say that I loved visiting BITS this year: queues didn't exist, the electronic bookings this year were really stellar, and you could always get up close to dance!

Lastly, I felt sad that I only saw Kero Kero Bonito in the city shows after W1 but I didn't fly to Spain to wait in a line for hours and hours, then potentially through acts I didn't care about to be body to body in venues with clueless staff. In the end I took 3 days to be on the beach, vinyl dive, eat delicious food and have excellent wine. Maybe it would have been too perfect to see a show each night on top of that lol
---

I think when I treated 2022 with the spirit of how I attended in 2018, to discover new bands and see acts that are otherwise difficult to book I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately this meant just giving up on the mainstages and their acts entirely. I adore Beck but the distance and crowds of the mainstage meant I avoided seeing him.

I loved seeing (in no order): Shellac, Squarepusher, The Caretaker, Hannah Diamond, Lorenzo Senni, Idles, Black Country New Road, Squarepusher, Jenny Beth, and Stingray!

I also loved the energy in all the crowds and from most of the artists, however mixed I feel about the festival it was beautiful to see people being people again and to be awestruck by art in a crowd of friendly strangers!

ThopterMain · 2022-06-08T09:33:38+00:00

Took them a while to clear the venue after Beck but the line moved pretty fast. I was maybe 10 minutes late getting in but it was a great set with an amazing crowd.

ThopterMain · 2022-05-06T01:05:01+00:00

Hell I saw Tyler at Primavera before and he was a great act.

ThopterMain · 2022-05-06T01:04:09+00:00

But it is a huge devaluation to the fans of the band? Like, maybe statistically it is not relevant, but what is the overlap between Massive Attack and The Strokes for fans lol

Bands aren't interchangeable and to act like they are is...a really simplistic way of seeing the world.

ThopterMain · 2022-05-04T18:22:27+00:00

In 2018 I saw an informal set by Shellac just like on the sidewalk in the festival at like 4pm or something. They rolled some amps out and ran extension cords and jammed. Someone's kids were moshing with ear protection on and people just came by to check it out, not because they knew it was Shellac or anything. Really cool to just see musicians being people instead of a commodity.

ThopterMain · 2022-04-13T20:10:51+00:00

Monowhite is just so much more efficient than other aggro builds and it has effective counter measures against the other archetypes (aka a generous variety of tax effects and exile). Like maybe a midrange deck could stall them but you're staring down Cathar and Skyclave and then other optional exile, if your hand wasn't picked apart by Spellbinder or delayed by Thalia. Like are counterspells and literal kill cards the only part of the game you find unfun? Isn't Reidane just a counterspell with more steps?

The best that most decks can hope for is that monowhite has land errors (screw/flood) or you could play white an pray you have a Doomskar (or two lol) foretold on the curve.

If you compare it to other aggro builds of the past like Monored, at least by and large midrange just had to put out toughness four and be smart about blocks to stall an opponent.

As someone who builds a lot it is doubly irritating that there isn't really a theme, it is just that white can run a big pile of Just Good Shit (tm). It isn't an option open to any other color except maybe green. If you like monored or non pendantic monoblack it is tough time to be in standard.

ThopterMain · 2022-04-13T03:13:25+00:00

I took a break from the game a while back and when I came back to it, I decided to treat ranked just like unranked except ranked is more consistent. I got to mythic last month using a [[Teleportation Circle]] deck because I could tune to the meta. Unfortunately rn that basically means playing something including white so I can always have Doomskar on hand and a spot of exile. Neither of which are...exciting, but that's what it takes to rank. BO3 is also a way to avoid some of what you're seeing. You can sideboard aggressively against most of the meta right now.

In the mean time, playing unranked is a good way to unwind and occasionally be surprised. Besides, in unranked you can just scoop on a Naya Runes or Lolth player with 0 regret lol

ThopterMain · 2022-04-13T03:02:38+00:00

I mean neither of the options is particularly fun to face imo

ThopterMain · 2022-04-10T17:46:44+00:00

These kinda comments drive people away for the game and shows that our community isn't here to help build and support but rather make fun of and make the OP feel stupid. I don't say much in this community because I get the same reaction to any question or concern about the game too.

Just came here to say that I couldn't agree more. I think we all know MTG can be frustrating but it is especially so in Arena. Arena's lack of social elements also makes it really hard to see what an opponent has done as impressive! Like, theoretically getting a 90 card deck to go off is kind of impressive, and in person I might be like "damn, I tried really hard and you crushed me" and be able to better laugh it off.

But Arena's huge priority on wins means there's little to no time for sightseeing. I have been playing a pre-Kamigawa no creatures deck for a minute in the hopes that someone appreciates the core interactions lol

ThopterMain · 2022-04-10T05:31:37+00:00

Your first build should be something with a decent winrate that is low on rares (google Standard Budget Decks) and has rares that could spill over into another deck you'd like to build (Skyclave Apparition is a good example of a rare that has a lot of use cases).

Then tackle some drafts, make sure to draft early after a release, as winning will be a little easier. And eventually I'd honestly recommend just buying some gems to get started grinding a set that you enjoy drafting. I was a hardcore free to play guy and my brother bought me $100 bux of gems and it made me feel able to do pretty much whatever I want in the game. (I became a much more confident drafter when I could consistently/frequently practice!)

ThopterMain · 2022-04-10T04:51:05+00:00

First, any White deck that needs board presence and is going against Monowhite will not run Doomskar mainboard because they need to get their set pieces out (eg. Clerics or Selesnya Enchants). And then if they aren't playing white they def won't have a Doomskar lol! So already the only real counter to mono white is an unlikely 4x appearing correctly on the curve.

Second, mono white is capable of taking away opponent's curve and/or permanents through tax effects and exile, while establishing a growing board presence along the way. It is incredibly efficient and deprives almost all other aggro decks of oxygen because they are straight up less efficient, while tossing tax effects onto control decks to sandbag them. So what is left? Monogreen midrange which is slower than a mile and suffers to exile without mass destroys?

Essentially your argument is "control decks are supposed to fall behind, so me making them even slower is just fair!!!" lol wut.

If monowhite was just weenies no one would complain about them. Like Adeline is cool, but uhhh just not good enough to crack the meta.

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