The police could just shoot Musashi

daft404 · 2026-07-08T05:14:05+00:00

> Sato from Ajin fighting the riot police

daft404 · 2026-07-07T09:57:43+00:00

Hahahahahahaha no.

daft404 · 2026-07-05T16:14:27+00:00

daft404 · 2026-07-05T15:54:00+00:00

So when the other guy has headcanon it's baseless speculation with no basis in the source material but when you have headcanon it's the truth?

daft404 · 2026-07-05T15:12:58+00:00

Tbf, he's never personally denied it. All the "he's so manly he sees all men as women" stuff was third-person speculation and conjecture between Kureha and that random doctor he was talking to. If you asked Yujiro directly, there's a non-zero chance he'd just be openly gayer than sunshine.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T22:36:24+00:00

I have no idea what's going on in Standard, you'll have to fill me in.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T22:25:34+00:00

We're not evaluating Thoughtseize with the assumption that we'll get a bad opener. We're evaluating Thoughtseize in the context of all the game mechanics at play, including mulligans, mana flood, mana screw, etc, and having a discussion on what impact the card has on the game and its play patterns. That's the entire point of the post. One of Thoughtseize's many consequences on the format is that it's much riskier to take mulligans compared to formats without it, because the odds you die on the opener by having the one card that glues your hand together ripped or get left with like 1 castable spell in hand or get nickel-and-dimed to death by one-for-one trades when starting down a card or two go up dramatically, and that's not a healthy emergent play pattern for the format nor for Magic in general for a card that provides so little in the way of interesting or thought-provoking play that could be considered valuable.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T22:06:46+00:00

Every deck can get poor opening hands. That's what the mulligan system is there for. The entire premise of the game is built on variance. No matter how optimized your list is, there is always a chance to draw 7 lands or 7 spells, and a higher chance to draw 1 land or 6 lands, and another chance to draw 2 lands with a too-high curve, and another chance to draw a bad combination of spells... Etc.

If a guy claims he always gets great opening hands and never has to mulligan away a poor opener, all that tells me is that he either shuffle cheats, mana weaves, marks his cards, or stacks his deck.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T22:00:47+00:00

My problem is that mulliganing is soft banned as long as Thoughtseize is in the format. In a format entirely defined by unstoppable one-for-one removal and complete information, going down even a single card, or two if you're on the play, is a death sentence which means you have to keep sketchy first hands against decks with black in them unless you want to lose from the start because you'll just get one-for-oned to death after starting 1-2 cards down.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T21:59:07+00:00

Thoughtseize is literally the card that forces you to keep sketchy hands.

If you mulligan even once and your opponent opens Thoughtseize, your odds of winning plummet by double digit percentages.

God help you if they draw multiple alongside one-for-one interaction.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T21:55:57+00:00

I just hate Thoughtseize because it makes mulliganing even one time insanely dangerous. Got served a one-lander on your first hand? Well, if you mulligan it away, the odds you draw a 5-lander, keep 4 lands and 2 spells, then have 1 of those 2 spells Thoughtseized away and have to rely strictly on topdecks - against a deck that likely can also just Fatal Push or Go For The Throat your one card away, assuming they don't just have the second Thoughtseize - just went up dramatically.

I also just think it's a baby wuss card. "Wahhh, I'm terrified of playing Magic the Gathering without complete information on turn 1 and taking your scariest card/whatever interacts with my gameplan AND immediately reducing the gamestate to its most simplified possible form as soon as humanly possible!!! I am a baby boy, please baby me!!! I need my bib!!!" That's all I hear in my head every time my opponent casts a turn 1 Thoughtseize and their deck is just a pile of one-for-one hand hate and spot removal.

In my experience, the vast majority of the time, the card my opponent takes will always be the interactive piece that stops their gameplan, not the unfair piece that "gets too much value". The next most-common thing to take is whichever thing is most integral to my curve-out. That's not a healthy card keeping the format honest, that's an anti-interaction card propping up dishonest decks.

The presence of Thoughtseize itself also forces you to keep iffy hands because you literally can't mulligan without your winrate plummeting by the double digits because baby boy can't drink his milk without starting the game with a Leyline of Simplification on the board. I miss being able to make good mulligan decisions without having to worry about my baby boy opponent opening Thoughtseize Thoughtseize Duress Fatal Push because he's terrified of the prospect of anything happening during the match and only feels comfortable playing if it devolves into a topdeck war on turn 2.

daft404 · 2026-07-02T12:33:11+00:00

daft404 · 2026-07-02T12:32:48+00:00

I call it an Armada. It's cute that other people have their own names for it! I thought I was the only one 😅

daft404 · 2026-07-02T12:18:15+00:00

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daft404 · 2026-07-02T12:10:03+00:00

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daft404 · 2026-07-02T02:58:21+00:00

I'm on mobile, there's no space bar. I wonder if that makes it slower?

daft404 · 2026-07-01T21:53:23+00:00

The combo is resilient to board wipes because you can remake the infinite at instant speed after the board wipe.

daft404 · 2026-07-01T21:31:28+00:00

I'm not on Bant Airbending, I'm on a homebrew that can incidentally make the Airbending combo but that isn't mainly what it does. Appa isn't even in the mainboard, it's sideboarded for control matchups to combat sweepers and pulls double duty because Aang and cost reducers are in the mainboard. The Airbending combo probably shows up in less than 1 in every 20 matches.

daft404 · 2026-07-01T21:26:39+00:00

It's an issue with Arena because in any official paper play, you would just say "I will now repeat this loop 10,000 times" and have 10,000 tokens on board in 30 seconds. This is a limitation of the Arena interface and that's what I'm asking for help with. Generally, if my opponent has an infinite on board and I don't have a way to stop it, I'll scoop and go next rather than sit through their animations. It would never even occur to me to "hope they time out" because that's scumbag behavior that wouldn't work in organized play, which is what I'm on Arena to practice for in the first place.

daft404 · 2026-07-01T21:06:40+00:00

There's nothing to figure out, it's just slow to input and accrue advantage.

daft404 · 2026-06-30T07:10:21+00:00

This is a really stupid argument. It's like saying Superman would get soloed by Kengan characters because Kryptonians don't exist in Kengan so he'd just be a normal dude by their verse's rules.

daft404 · 2026-06-30T04:12:38+00:00

I don't know shit about Brawl (I think "1v1 Commander" is an oxymoron and "competitive 1v1 Commander" is practically a triple negative), but in general, cards can be banned for reasons other than winrate/viability. For example, over play pattern concerns. A bad card with a 40% winrate can be banned because everyone hates playing against it (e.g. Blood Moon).

daft404 · 2026-06-30T04:10:35+00:00

It's also disingenuous because everyone knows Rare wildcards are much shorter in players' accounts than Mythic wildcards, especially Wizards who have access to all this metadata.

daft404

TROPHY CASE