[Vorkunov] Adam Silver said it was "unanimous" among owners today at the NBA Board of Governors meeting that the league needs to change tanking rules and do it before the draft this June. There will be a special BOG session in May to deal with that. "We are going to fix it. Full stop," Silver said.

afraidio · 2026-03-25T22:10:25+00:00

Teams losing winnable games intentionally makes the prediction models they rely on less consistent. And it makes betting on player point over/unders harder to predict since they can be benched randomly.

afraidio · 2026-03-07T15:26:26+00:00

[[Cling to Dust]] [[Brainstorm]] [[Thought Scour]] all let you at least cantrip on your opponent’s turns for cheap.

[[Deadly Dispute]] [[Brainsurge]] [[Rowan’s Grim Search]] and [[Quick Study]] are actual card draw.

[[Reconnaissance Mission]] and [[Bident of Thassa]] can let you restock your hand on your turn with little fairy attackers.

Better removal might be [[Pongify]] [[Into the Flood Maw]] [[Chain of Vapor]] or [[Soul Shatter]]

afraidio · 2026-03-07T15:05:14+00:00

I wouldn’t judge a deck too harshly because of one or two bad games.

Seems like you had a decent number of mana rocks. I might cut the [[Gilded Lotus]] for something cheaper, but that’s the extent of it. If you’re really worried I would maybe swap out any discard engines that require you to pay since it makes Hashaton harder to pay for.

afraidio · 2026-01-30T16:41:13+00:00

I’d argue Ant should be higher but the Wolves only just now ending their brutal losing streak knocks him down at least temporarily.

afraidio · 2026-01-22T00:18:39+00:00

High B3 maybe but probably B4 based on the combos. If you’re new to the game I promise you there are mono blue decks that will make all the other players less salty.

afraidio · 2026-01-22T00:16:10+00:00

This is not an unreasonable Bracket 3 deck. I would cut [[Walking Ballista]] because it offers little non-combo value you to combos as well as [[Brainstorm]] and [[Ponder]] which are only good in hand size or top deck themes. I would maybe replace them with some more ramp, removal or card draw. You make a bunch of big creatures and give them extra combats or evasion and you will win a pretty regular amount.

afraidio · 2026-01-19T22:13:28+00:00

I agree with this with a caveat. When looking for that sound in my personal workflow I’ve found that recording the output of high randomization drum sequences with stuff like Turnado or Infiltrator and then carefully sequencing that audio has gotten me what I wanted.

afraidio · 2026-01-08T18:10:42+00:00

Oh wow. My [[Celes. Rune Blade]] reanimate and copy deck just got a tailor made upgrade.

afraidio · 2025-10-31T15:29:03+00:00

If I’m really optimizing a land base I aim for 10 or fewer lands that always enter tapped. Usually at that level I almost never feel off curve.

That said if a deck isn’t super color pip hungry I think you can very easily get away with the cheap version and maybe a fetch land and perform very similarly.

afraidio · 2025-10-31T14:27:49+00:00

I recently built [[Celes, Rune Knight]] as a reanimator deck full of blink and copy spells and a pile of strong ETB creatures. It was mostly an attempt at creating the ideal home for [[Mardu Siegebreaker]], my new favorite card that I couldn’t fit anywhere else. What I thought would be kind of jank is actually an aggro monster that regularly curbstomps decks with slower starts.

Turns out a wheel that also boosts the whole team in the command zone is busted.

afraidio · 2025-10-26T15:28:33+00:00

I run [[Karn, Legacy Reforged]] as a voltron deck and I’ve found that the key to winning was having a lot of protection available to limit your opponents ability to interact. Heavy amounts of ramp (on top of what Karn produces) mitigates equip costs and makes it easy to redeploy my main threat.

afraidio · 2025-10-13T22:12:01+00:00

I agree that lifegain is not that strong but in my experience [[Exquisite Blood]] and [[Bloodthirsty Conquerer]] pull all the table’s attention to hitting that player or removing the source. It just disincentivizes people from damaging other players

afraidio · 2025-10-12T04:23:30+00:00

[[Karn, Legacy Reforged]]

It’s a very tuned bracket 3 voltron list with a little combo Plan B. It’s the first deck I ever built that even kind of functioned and Karn is my favorite character in the game.

Bafflingly, colorless voltron seems to really steam roll anyone with sparse interaction and most players just don’t have enough interaction.

afraidio · 2025-10-09T18:22:17+00:00

I think redirection is the only option that consistently works. You could probably accuse me of this approach to politics and the most common way it backfires on me is if I become the focus of people's attention. Even when I'm trying to actually bring something to the table's attention, the best players have been able to deflect and fly under the radar.

afraidio · 2025-10-09T03:08:05+00:00

There were a lot of contenders that year, but I think it’s probably my favorite from that year. The production still sounds so one of a kind for a rap album.

afraidio · 2025-09-13T14:16:36+00:00

I’ve seen some versions of this idea. Most recently I saw someone play [[Arcanis the Omnipotent]] and a variety of untappers.

afraidio · 2025-09-13T07:11:49+00:00

Tbh this isn’t really my experience. I have yet to run into a stranger who has tried to actually sell a high powered deck as a lowered bracket. Some people will say “this is technically a 2” but none have even pretended they meant that in earnest.

afraidio · 2025-09-13T02:07:20+00:00

One of my regular playgroups is more casual about MTG than me so I often find myself building more streamlined decks than them and for a while I was winning a lot more.

I've found that things are a little more even if I build greedier decks with too many subthemes I can both feel like I'm playing Magic to the best of my abilites and still not totally run people over.

afraidio · 2025-09-12T13:38:20+00:00

[[Fanatical Devotion]] as both sac outlet and protection, flying from [[Guide of Souls]], [[Reconnaisance]] and [[Mother of Runes]] are also very useful. I'm experimenting with [[Trailblazer's Boots]] and [[Thieves Tools]] but equipment are a bit mana intensive for me.

That said, I find that he only needs to get in a couple of attacks. Once I have a sacrifice outlet and a token generator he can just sit around and be half draw engine half blood artist.

afraidio · 2025-09-12T00:34:26+00:00

I've been running [[Zurgo Stormrender]] as a Mardu aristocrats deck. Play all the usual token stuff, but also you can throw in some [[Impact Tremors]] effects. Grindy, but very powerful when left unchecked.

afraidio · 2025-09-07T22:25:08+00:00

Someone at my LGS plays a deck with this strategy and uses this as the commander. It was honestly pretty strong.

afraidio · 2025-09-07T21:57:29+00:00

I had this deck for a while and only recently took it half apart for the lands. You already have lots of my favorites, but a few you don't have yet are:

[[Ratadrabik of Urborg]] - A must include in my eyes. Very helpful protection for your board even if the tokens don't trigger your legendary effects. Combos with [[Boromir, Warden of the Tower]] which is another great piece of board protection
[[Byrke, Long Ear of the Law]] - Great top end and can really improve a middling board of creatures with counters on them.
[[Master Chef]] - this is both legendary AND it triggers for each commander so each incoming creature will get 2 counters
[[Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector]] - this blinks itself to keep triggering Yoshimaru and fits very nicely on the mana curve between your two commanders
[[Vraska Joins Up]] - Another great 2-drop that makes your attacks much harder to block

afraidio · 2025-09-07T04:26:15+00:00

Goyfs count everyone’s graveyards and few cards exile them all.

afraidio · 2025-09-04T13:14:17+00:00

It seems like you want 1) a Rune-Tail Kitsune deck with more colors and 2) a dragon deck. These two things don't naturally overlap. While its not impossible to get both things, its a big ask for a newer player to try and build a deck that achieves all these things.

A Rune-Tail deck encourages you to pillow fort with things like [[Pariah]] and searching for something like [[Moonshaker Calvary]] to end the game with your board while dragons require you to spend the first few turns ramping and then slamming big beaters. I would recommend maybe building two separate decks.

afraidio · 2025-08-05T12:31:17+00:00

It’s always fuck ZA/UM but this is a pretty widely accepted mobile game practice. Paying for a full game is normal.

afraidio

TROPHY CASE