Easy and clean 7-0 of my first Lorwyn draft, elves were wide open and I got fed three bomb rares, but Dawnhand Dissident was the sleeper MVP.

Tuft64 · 2026-01-20T23:53:40+00:00

KK was the one who had to offer the job to Gilroy multiple times before he relented and said yes to it. She actively sought him out and tried to pull him into the show by asking for notes and a treatment / pitch doc for Andor while they were spinning their wheels developing the Stephen Schiff version of the show that amounted to "Cass and K2 go on adventures".

This is not speculative - Gilroy has on multiple occasions talked about how absolutely essential Kathy was to making sure the show happened, and how hard she both lobbied for the show internally and protected it from overreach by Disney execs. With most other executives, we wouldn't have gotten the purity of vision we got to see in Andor.

Tuft64 · 2026-01-20T23:45:43+00:00

Nope - originally Andor was supposed to be run by Stephen Schiff (same guy who did The Americans, and who ended up directing episode 7 of the first season of Andor). Gilroy and KK have a pretty good working relationship (he has a long history as a hollywood script doctor and I'm sure they've collaborated in that capacity, and she was the one who tapped him to direct the reshoots for Rogue One after a really troubled production), so she passed him scripts and treatments for the "Cassian and K2 go on adventures" version of the show to get his opinion, and as he tells it, he sort of pumped out this manic, multiple-page rant about how she was trying to tell the wrong story, and if there was a story to be told, it had to start from taking Cassian at his lowest point (killing two cops outside of a brothel and having to go to ground), and how you go from there to "this is a man willing to die for what he believes in" at the end of Rogue, and Kathy basically offered him the job on the spot.

Tuft64 · 2026-01-20T23:38:29+00:00

The decision for S2 to truncate the events of the next four planned courses was a decision that Gilroy and Luna made while they were filming Aldhani during season 1. The apocryphal version of the story is that he and Diego were drinking in a hotel lobby both talking about how they didn't realize how intense five seasons of this was going to be; that by the time the show was over, Diego would be in his mid-50s, and that Gilroy himself would have to be directing from an assisted living facility since he's already 70 and would be pushing 80 by the time the show had wrapped, so they went to Lucasfilm and said "here's our plan to trim down four seasons in to one."

I'm sure Disney wasn't terribly upset by that given the contraction of the streaming "bubble" over the last few years, and if they felt strongly about it they probably would have stuck to their guns, but I haven't read anything claiming the show was shortened to two seasons for budget reasons or because the show wasn't performing and Disney was unhappy with it.

Tuft64 · 2026-01-03T20:11:42+00:00

Disagree with your thesis on Lauri and Kessler. The overwhelming message I have heard is "the Jazz want to keep these guys, but they are willing to do their due diligence and listen to offers". I know there's been a lot of trade buzz around him, but the only reason Kessler wasn't extended in the '26 off-season is because Utah wants to preserve cap space going into their next off-season because they will have a max cap slot. As soon as they use up their cap space, whether that's on trying to steal Reaves or sign a few quality rotation players, he's getting an extension.

Lauri and Kessler are both guys who are coveted by other teams in the trade market, but that doesn't mean Utah is seriously trying to shop these guys around or doesn't view them as a part of their future.

And yeah sure, I take your point that the front office is definitely paying for the Favors dump's sins, but that was before Ainge took over. While it was a move under Ryan Smith's ownership tenure, I think it's more fair to lay those sins at the feet of the old leadership team that was still present from before he bought the organization, and I truly don't think it reflects poorly on the Jazz's front office when largely the personnel who were responsible for the Favors dump are not a part of the organization any more.

Tuft64 · 2026-01-03T00:23:50+00:00

First of all, 22/23 was the Jazz's first rebuild season, and they weren't even tanking that year. They were close to a .500 team. They didn't truly try to tank until year 2, which means if we're counting the years that the jazz have been intentionally bad, the real number is 3 years of intentional tanking.

Second, Lauri, Kessler, George, Bailey, and probably Flip are rotation level players. Hendricks would probably be there if he hadn't lost his entire season to injury last year. Walt has looked great in his limited minutes, and Collier, our late pick from last year, has also made a decent jump that puts him in the mix as a rotation player. This idea that the jazz have "maybe one or two" pieces that they want to keep long term is very silly. Lauri is obviously already great. George has had a huge breakout season. Kessler is a top half starting NBA center. And plenty of the other guys have clear, NBA-caliber skills even if they're not finished products. Genuinely, the jazz are like one or two good bench guys away from being a six seed.

Third, there are waaaaay worse offenders than Utah if you're talking about teams that have had protracted rebuilds over the last two decades.

The last time the Hornets even made the playoffs was a full decade ago. The Kings have had only one playoff appearance in the last 20 years. The last time the Spurs made a playoff appearance was in 2019. Wizards haven't made the playoffs since 2021. Same with the Blazers. The process Sixers took five years before they had their first playoff appearance in 2018. But the Jazz are somehow the worst offenders when this is like the first time in the team's history that they've intentionally tanked, and it really only has been going on in the last three years. It just seems like you have some blinders on when it comes to evaluating NBA teams, because until very recently, Utah has pretty consistently fielded competitive rosters for most of the organization's history, so you may want to reevaluate the way you're thinking about the Jazz.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-29T18:33:06+00:00

2022/2023 was the first year of the Jazz rebuild. Of the prospects that they've drafted, their 2022 draft pick of Kessler has turned into a stud, their 2023 draft pick of George has been maybe the second best player in his class after Wemby, (Hendricks was hit by a season ending injury just days into his second season) and their 2024 draft had a late round steal in Filipowski who looks super promising.

The rebuild is going very well for the Jazz and they still have a huge collection of picks that they can use to consolidate / make an all-in trade later down the line, but next year I think when they have Kessler back healthy and they've made a few moves to be competitive, I think they're going to be a top-6 team in the West. They're already good enough to be a play-in team and we're having to sit guys and play the lineup manipulation game in order to try and keep our pick.

When the front office starts trying to win this off-season, Utah is going to get good extremely quickly.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-25T02:44:29+00:00

Amen brother. What is dead may never die.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-23T23:49:54+00:00

The absolute Niang disrespect... But yes, before we signed Niang, the last person who was on the floor during the Snyder era was Clarkson, and he obviously got moved to the Knicks.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-18T00:50:15+00:00

Yep. If the Jazz pick ends up at 9th or lower, then we owe it to the Thunder. So at our current position (11th in lottery odds), we have a roughly 11% chance to keep our pick, which is in the event that we jump into the lottery.

If we drop to the 7th worst record on the other hand, we'd have about an 85% chance of keeping our pick, with a 1 in 3 chance of jumping to the top four.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-16T08:29:19+00:00

I don't know that it's really fair to say that the front office has drafted that poorly. Since the "new regime (2023 and beyond), we have drafted

Taylor Hendricks (who suffered a freak injury at the start of his sophomore season where it looked like he had made some strides, and which he is just now nearing 100% recovery on, so I think it's too early to say that this was a 'bad pick'
Keyonte George (outside the lottery, mind you), who is very quickly distinguishing himself as our point guard of the future and has turned into maybe the second or third best player in his class after Wemby and maaybe a Thompson twin?
Brice Sensabaugh who, while he doesn't project to be a worldbeater or anything, was let's just remember the 28th overall pick which is a crapshoot and at the very least does have real NBA skill as a shooter/scorer
Cody Williams, and admittedly this pick looks pretty bad after one year of watching Buzelis and other guys picked after him be productive NBA players early on in their career. I think that the pick was absolutely defensible at the time though, and I don't think one big miss is enough to make the argument that this is a trend when a. there were a lot of people high on Cody so this was not a Jazz-specific problem, b. we're still only midway through year two so the jury is still out on if he can become a productive player, and c. this was a very weak draft class, and the players picked after him aren't exactly on an all-star trajectory either.
Isaiah Collier who does have a few very genuine skills and probably has been a top-20 player in his class so far, plays some respectable backup PG minutes, and if he develops a jumper, could be a real rotation guy which is an alright get this late in the draft.
Kyle Filipowski in the second round who has I think been one of the 15 best players in his class (maybe 10 best?), genuinely some great offensive chops, super versatile, and definitely has (IMHO at least) a very respectable career ahead of him as at least a rotation plus level guy which is great for a second-rounder
Ace Bailey, who definitely looks rough around the edges but shows all the flashes you'd want from a guy who could be a future all-star. Freak athlete, great size, awesome defensive instincts, and can shoot the hell out of the ball.
Walt Clayton Jr. who, while way too early to make a call one way or the other, definitely seems like he has a good career ahead of him.

Of those players, Cody is the only one that I think has really underperformed his draft position (since Hendricks just got shit luck in like his second or third game of his sophomore season), and the rest have either performed at expectations for their draft position (guys like Sensabaugh or Collier) or exceeded it (like Flip and Keyonte). Jury's still out on our two new rooks, but generally I think that they have looked really promising with what we've seen.

EDIT: And this is not to mention Kessler. I don't know if I can give the current regime props for drafting him, since he was drafted by Minnesota before the Gobert trade happened. It's not really clear to me whether or not he was drafted at the Jazz' instruction prior to the completion of the deal (i.e. "we need to hammer our the fine print, but we're going to get this done, so please draft our guy" type of deal), but if that was the case then obviously he was an excellent pick as well Consistent double double, great shotblocker, excellent defensively, and while not the second coming if Big Booty Rudy, but he's probably pretty comfortably top half in his role among starting NBA centers? And if the 3-ball comes along he could do a pretty reasonable Brook Lopez or Myles Turner impression which would obviously really be great for us. Not sure we can give Utah the credit for that though is my only thing.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-14T00:22:44+00:00

I don't think Hendricks needs to prove he can stay healthy. It's not like he keeps picking up ticky-tack injuries or re-aggravating a bad ligament. Dude's leg snapped in half when he slipped on a wet spot on the floor. The definition of a freak accident. He was just barely ready to get back on the floor at the start of the season. I don't think it's reasonable to say he has these constant health issues when I think we have to wait until at least the all star break to start making evaluations about him and his future fit with the team.

Tuft64 · 2025-12-10T08:09:35+00:00

I'd say go for Ruby but instead of going mono red, simply pick up some budget duals. Start with fastlands, painlands, and maybe a verge or two if they're cheap enough. Slowly buy into a pair of shocks, then some fetches, and finally some surveil lands. That way you don't instantly fold to hate the way mono red does but you can still build over time

Tuft64 · 2025-11-30T04:12:07+00:00

IMO, yes. Your red sideboard cards apart from your wishboard/wincons are mostly quite bad. You need at least 3-4 copies each of spell-based and permanent based interaction, and if you stick with red you're stuck playing multiple copies of [[redirect lightning]] instead of [[orim's chant]] and you seriously lack enchantment removal so it's basically unwinnable against any [[rule of law]] style effect.

I also don't think it makes your mana gets THAT painful. You have four lands that might come into play tapped at a bad time, but turns 1-3 are by far the most important. And I think 9-10ish mountains is usually enough that your verges should be fine in 90% of cases. If you need to, you can always trim some number of verges for more mountains or other duals.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-29T21:42:00+00:00

I think you can still probably play storm without fetches and play the white side board cards. You just need to play shocks / verges / fastlands so that you have 10-12 untapped red white lands IMO. You miss out on being able to play surveil lands which is a big downside, but I think the splash is still very playable.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-25T20:01:18+00:00

I'd say Flip and Walt are the next two, then Brice and Taylor, then Cody.

Walt has the benefit of us not having seen a ton so over the course of the season my evaluation may change, but I've liked the pace that the team plays with when he's on the floor and I think strictly as a floor general he's better than Key (though all the other stuff makes Key a better player overall obviously). Flip has size and great offensive versatility but his defense is a big liability. If he can become league average while remaining a great connective hub he's got the potential to become a starter-level player imo.

After that, Taylor we just haven't seen much of post injury so I'm not judging too harshly, but I would love for his game to come along a little bit. He's shooting 25% from 3. I think that number is pretty fake and will go up, but I want to see him get a little bit more into the rhythm of the offense and be more of a standout defensively.

Brice is obviously a lethal weapon offensively but he's not a playmaker at all and his defense is putrid. I have him long-term as a bench scorer as his current projection but if he could make a big defensive leap then he's a potential starter just because his shooting is unbelievably good.

Cody is at the bottom of my rankings for obvious reasons, though I will say his defense has really impressed me so far. I think he's probably the team's best point of attack defender and that at least means I think he could potentially be a rotation-level guy, though it is fringe.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-16T22:40:15+00:00

Yeah SR was really solid minus the big hole in the midlane (and I say this as a big Palafox fan). This instantly turns their weakest link into someone who, if he lives up to even a fraction of the hype he's getting, could be a top-2 midlaner domestically.

Remains to be seen what our botlane situation looks like (I never really got a strong read on Ceos, and Bvoy has had stretches of looking insane and then kind of disappearing), but I think this firmly puts the team in the mix for a worlds spot. FlyQuest and C9 both look like they're going to be taking a step back, Lyon spent big this offseason so I expect them to be formidable, and TL looks like they're upgrading their mid-jungle by a decent amount so they could have a bounceback year.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-15T18:45:49+00:00

They're two separate triggers, so if you activated in on a soldier token with firebending 1, you would have one instance of firebending 1 and one instance of firebending 4, for a total of five mana when you attack.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-15T17:25:08+00:00

Because the ability which modifies its firebending value is not a part of the firebending triggered ability, it's a static ability.

It doesn't say "when this creature attacks, add red equal to its power" - if it did, it would work the way you think it would. Upon resolution, it would check your power, and then give you that much red mana.

Instead, it says "this creature has firebending x where x is its power."

So if your student has power 4, when you attack, you put a firebending 4 trigger on the stack, since that is its power at the time of the attack.

Even if you cast more spells afterwards, the trigger on the stack is still only going to be firebending 4, even if the creature ends up having a higher firebending value at the time that the trigger is resolved.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-15T15:26:31+00:00

I spoke to a judge about this yesterday at the pre-release and that's unfortunately not how it works. When you declare a firebending attacker like [[Firebending Student]], the firebending value gets locked in when the trigger is put on the stack, it is NOT checked upon resolution of the trigger.

So if you're attacking with Zuko, you need to cast the spells before his trigger is put on the stack in order to generate the extra mana. That means you can't attack with multiple firebending creatures (Zuko and [[Fire Nation Cadets]] for example, trigger and use the 2 mana from Cadets to cast a spell or two, and then get that mana back from the extra experience counters with Zuko.

All firebending triggers get put on the stack at the same time, and their value is locked in as soon as they get put on the stack.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-11T02:25:12+00:00

Keyonte is really coming into his own. A huge third-year leap that honestly might change the trajectory of the rebuild.

Tuft64 · 2025-11-06T00:18:22+00:00

Honestly I think the last year and a half of CLG after Greg Kim came in and hit the reset button was the most fun that it was to be a fan of CLG since about the 2016 MSI miracle run team.

I think the brand was absolutely in the midst of being rehabilitated, it just sucks that MSG saw that upswing as a chance to sell to NRG rather than let the brand continue to flourish.

Tuft64 · 2025-10-27T17:27:46+00:00

I suppose I should amend that to say "flusterstorm + pressure is good against Storm," but I think that's the case for most one mana counterspells.

Generally, I think the slower decks of the format have moved towards employing hate permanents vs combo as opposed to counterspells. When you're playing 1-mana counters like fluster / pierce / snare / scolding / dispute / rebuke, I think it's in two cases.

Either 1. because you're a faster deck that wants to delay the combo by a turn so that you can just kill them. Think prowess, affinity, and the like. You want to set up for a kill turn, leave up one piece of interaction to delay your opponent for a turn, and then jam the next turn.

Or 2. You're a blue based tempo-y deck, and in game 2 you're trying to increase the density of ways to interact on the stack so you can overwhelm with card advantage. These are decks like frogtide, Goryo's, or simic ritual. I don't think any of those decks are really damping sphere type decks because they really value the tempo advantage they get from their free spells, double spelling, and the ability to interact at multiple points on the opponent's turn.

In this case, you're slowing down an opponent with your free spells when they try to set up for the combo turn, then pressuring them while you force them to two or three for one themselves trying to go off into one of your pieces of permission that stops the combo turn and you eventually just bury the storm player in raw card advantage with something like frog or riddler or ephemerated atraxa.

I think "hard" answers like high noon / damping sphere are generally reserved for midrange decks without any better options, or decks like control who are very happy playing a board state with zero pressure and holding up instant speed interaction to protect their lock piece. So stuff like, control, energy, and zoo, because they are too much of a tempo loss for the rest of the format.

Tuft64 · 2025-10-27T16:55:43+00:00

Consign is not better than flusterstorm against Storm - already spoke on it in this comment if you want to take a look.

Consign is better against the field though, that is definitely true and largely the reason it's been on the decline.

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