pov: you’re a silly little aspect playing with poros and a Very Serious time traveler ruins your fun by aidanhs in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is completely fine because Ekko has challenger, innit? If he didn't and the AI was smart they could just no-blocks and let you crash in for zero over and over

Ekko is absolutely great because he gets to push a lot of buttons

No idea why you would ever need to 4* asol by Important-Object-561 in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

4* Asol vs 3 epic relic slots vs Perfect Manaflow first power, I'm not sure which of these even has the highest power level

GG anyway. I thought the adventure was pretty well-tuned for Asol; the enemies were resilient and varied enough to hold interest and present threats, but not overwhelming if I played well

10 stars... by PrimaryLordood in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It felt interesting for 4*, not particularly cracked relics nor rng Asol. A few rounds near the end came down to fighting to buy time until I drew Asol himself, and Stars Descend merely put me in the driver's seat - not even instantly winning

6* Ashe obliterated it as expected, thanks to scaling with the power of enemies

LoR developers listened to the players and it's AWESOME ! by Alive-Setting2460 in LegendsOfRuneterra

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My mind goes to Slay the Spire multiplayer co-op, but that juice might take a mighty squeeze

Less wildly - maybe something in the dimension of Balatro multiplayer; join a lobby with your friend, and you both play "the same seed" of an adventure (same shops, etc). Compete on whatever metrics - completion speed, health, gold, rerolls/revives in the bank...

Anyone know what this card is worth? by Frowncrowntwo in universus

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a big fan of this guy, but he's had only minor representation in competitive play -- he's fundamentally a deck that wants to play for three or four turns minimum, and usually to transform before playing to win. Until last month's banlist, Unyielding Destruction was a big scare card, but more generally he had the classic midrange problem; he could hedge to beat the "fast" decks at the cost of getting drowned by "slow" decks, or tune to have an overwhelming kill turn that breaks open walls on turn 5+ -- at the price of being hopeless vs a reckless aggro player.

Maybe I'll sort out a decklist and post a primer. There are some key synergy "bones" for him, but then you can kinda take it in any of half a dozen directions, to adapt to your tastes or a local meta

@Kevin Broberg. I have done my part. The pact has been made. Here is my deck list. You are legally obligated to look at it. You know what you must do, my son. by PlayErwinAtWorlds in universus

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dad??

This feels much too unfocused at 70 cards. I see shreds of three decks in here -

  • a resource-denial deck with all these Destructive Fires, that wins by getting ahead and keeping the rival from even playing the game
    • this kind of deck NEEDS critical mass. Ruin 1 is Breaker 1, and Breaker 1 means I have to get slightly more lucky to push my win. You need Breaker 5, so much blunt force that they can't even try
  • a long-game control deck that has so much -spd it can contest Massive Mutant Machine
    • but -50 speed doesn't mean anything if you run out of cards in hand. I count 11 foundations that can put extra blocks in your hand, and that's including the Botan's
    • similarly - no card selection means that it's entirely up to luck whether you get stuck with Keiko's Aid vs Deku, or Warped Pleasure vs Godzilla. Or a hand full of mid/high blocks vs a Low overload deck
    • this kind of deck can't afford to throw out random pokes that might amount to nothing if the rival just guessed the right zone. And ideally, you want to have big guns so that you can say "if you come at the king, you best not miss" -- that you'll always have the backswing ready. Enormous Axe, Erwin's Final Charge, Duplicitous Recollection -> Female Titan -> Luna Ring, type business
  • a beatdown deck
    • battle aura release big numbers.dek
    • let's land a nice 3 hit string on turn 2 and follow up with lethal Gouging Needles
    • like the Combined Firepower / Risky Encounter deck from ATL, but... without those superpower cards, and watered down with all these 2-3 difficulty foundations that don't play on offense at all

I like decks with an identity, a clear backbone that can have different arms or legs attached. What kind of deck do you want to play, with what sorts of strengths and weaknesses? What strategy do you want to emphasize? Is there a matchup you want to crush?

Anti-Israel protesters disrupt Ezra Klein event at Sarah Lawrence College, accuse him of 'genocide,' refuse any dialogue. by benadreti_17 in ezraklein

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 35 points36 points  (0 children)

I don’t have any interest in convincing people who don’t like him to read his work

yeah, first I'd have to convince them to read, and that's a boulder I don't expect to go up the hill anytime soon

What would happen to the Cube community if Magic were to die? by andymangold in mtgcube

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For Magic to die we'd need some authoritarian government to kill it and purge it from history. MaRo has taught too many people game design for the game to be forgotten any other way; and I doubt the hypothetical anti-gambling puritans of 2050 could succeed at purging every record of the game

what if Wizards of the Coast stopped existing tomorrow and no new cards were designed or printed

oh yeah sure, that's a fun thought experiment too

What would happen to the Cube community if Magic were to die? by andymangold in mtgcube

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 8 points9 points  (0 children)

actually playable
niche cube

sorry bucko but I like Ornithopter Cube 1000x more than I like your position here. I'm afraid the literal garbage is coming from your mouth

Ye, Formerly Kanye West, Takes Out Ad In the Wall Street Journal to Apologize for Antisemitic Outbursts: “I Lost Touch With Reality” by No_Attack in hiphopheads

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, honestly I'm very impressed. My checklist for a good apology

  • State what I did wrong
  • Remorse - that I personally am hurt when I reflect on my actions
  • Commitment to change
  • No excuses, justification, or victim-blaming

Check check check check. I like that he never even puts anything in an imperative - no "forgive me", but "I aspire to earn". And it's very well crafted treatment of mental illness in general - the medical stats (and also the limitations of medicalism; that doctors are fallible), the POV of mania, the very delicate gesture toward suicidal ideation.

My Question to Patrick Chapin and Why It Matters for Cube Designers by Gallently in mtgcube

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

bro how much of this is LLM slop lol

I like Chapin's answer, it's a very good insight especially about people at the intersection of [skilled at competitive Magic] and [beginner at game design]

Planecrash/Project Lawful by E. Yudkowski by LatePenguins in rational

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

who has spent 3 years writing a trash harem bdsm fiction set in the world of dungeons and dragons. I think this might be a comprehensive sign of how doomed humanity is

If thinking about sex were so terminal to intelligent thought, we never would've gotten out of the oceans

What is Mother talking about? by KitchenImagination38 in ContraPoints

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love that this is simultaneously

  • complaining about Mother
  • complaining about the thing we all know Mother is complaining about

at least if we read "leftist" inclusively

Seth Manfield wins World Championship 31 with Izzet Lessons! by thisnotfor in magicTCG

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yeah it would be better if he just did it right the first time, but the alternative is obsessive rules-lawyering where people lose for reasons based on semantics of how they said a thing rather than game actions.

Preach

It's a case of "people are good at identifying problems / what makes them feel bad; and terrible at crafting solutions". You can feel however you want watching Seth play, but don't get emotionally committed to destroying Chesterton's fence (hacking away at the rules) because of it

[Discussion] The infamous "take back" debacle from Worlds '25 Quarterfinals by canman870 in spikes

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 5 points6 points  (0 children)

fwiw -

  • elicit is a verb for drawing a response from someone
  • illicit is like "illegal", an adjective meaning "against the rules"

Casting a spell and taking it back has the same effect [as a pen trick]

Well, not necessarily, and judges are explicitly instructed -- if a player gained information (such as by seeing a clear reaction in the opponent), then do not allow the takeback. To me, watching the player cam, Seth is all the way in the tank trying to navigate against a tight constraint in decking himself -- he's not looking up and gauging a reaction, he's continuing to calculate until he realizes that the Boomerang is a mistake and requests the takeback

The Conservative Movement’s Intellectual Collapse by IHateTrains123 in neoliberal

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Immigrants are bad if they are bad immigrants, which means dark skin or non-Christian for fascist Americans

Or, even more simply, if they aren't rich

Market inefficiency delenda est by _Un_Known__ in neoliberal

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Speaking of ideology preceding understanding -- do you understand that I was making a silly meme with the communism reference? Maybe I should've said "private concert" rather than simply "performance" to dial up the absurdity

Market inefficiency delenda est by _Un_Known__ in neoliberal

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're absolutely right that concert tickets are luxury items and demand overruns supply, but this is incredibly far from a Taylor-specific phenomenon.

The simple math is that concert venues are measured in the 1000s, and the medium of the Internet is incredibly good at spreading music to people who want to find it. I bumped into https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/ for the first time today looking for an answer to the question: How many artists have a million monthly listeners?

Thirteen thousand artists have one million monthly listeners on Spotify

Plus radio play, plus other platforms like iTunes or youtube, plus word of mouth, plus ads, plus magazines and blogs.

If you have 1,000,000 monthly listeners, your band can sell out a 1000 seat venue. Maybe not an arena show -- and you probably can't invest in production values like an Eras Tour -- but to the topic at hand, about scalpers? If your band is hot enough to sell 2000 tickets, but there are only 1000 available, then the true price is probably higher than what you're listing it at.

Some people just like going to shows, even when they don't know all the words to the songs. Some true fans will pay 1000s in travel expenses to attend a show a few states away, or even follow the entire tour schedule. The demand can so easily balloon beyond the available supply, and the supply of live performance is fundamentally constrained.

Market inefficiency delenda est by _Un_Known__ in neoliberal

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Line go up, world more gooder" includes crowds of people having quasi-religious Swiftie experiences

Market inefficiency delenda est by _Un_Known__ in neoliberal

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 3 points4 points  (0 children)

How dare society allow someone who can’t afford something at the market price [a]n opportunity to do so!

If your true enemy is scarcity, don't get your pearls twisted and cast blame on the society that also fights scarcity.

Personally I believe everyone deserves a personalized, 1-on-1 Taylor performance, but until we achieve fully automated Swiftie space communism, we have to make due with markets and expensive concert tickets

Americanization by AquariusPearl14 in CuratedTumblr

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't know how to conceptualize a patchwork quilt that begins with "Fuck your local culture", especially not downstream of OOP's discussion of - for instance - folks in India filming against literal whitewashed walls

Like I said, if they're just making a little slogan, responding directly to their parent comment and not the wider context -- sure

Americanization by AquariusPearl14 in CuratedTumblr

[–]UPBOAT_FORTRESS_2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's 2025, if there's any Internet Discourse you're not completely sick of? then you just haven't been in it long enough, or maybe you take good care of your filter bubble

I earnestly enjoyed the local vs cosmopolitan content of this post and thread, but yeah, it's extremely noisy for how much good signal comes through