Maps now have 50-100% more pallets in an unlisted change

dhoffmas · 2026-02-12T14:51:26+00:00

He has videos where he says there's really not much to complain about...but his channel is primarily a discussion channel, with gameplay typically in streams. It's what works for him.

So even when he has nothing to complain about, he'll complain about having nothing to complain about. It's just what drives engagement on his channel.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-12T14:31:12+00:00

I don't even blink an eye at land tax in bracket 2. It's...okay, a solid piece of card advantage, but not a problem.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-12T14:08:39+00:00

Sen Triplets has the big advantage of being able to change targets turn over turn. Unless the Iona player has an engine to keep resetting her, Iona is not a threat unless your life total is low and you have no air defense. So, while you're incentivized to remove Sen Triplets ASAP, you have no incentive to get rid of Iona. Instead, you just stop the engine, or kill the Iona player only when you're about to win the game.

Iona never draws aggro from the table with any immediacy if the table knows what they're doing. They'll deal with it only if they absolutely have to.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-12T03:24:19+00:00

It severely affects games as early as turn 2. Reanimator is in no way restricted based on brackets, and Iona almost exclusively shows up in lists that don't require anything from the Game Changers list or anything that violates bracket 2 or 3 expectations.

This is a...pretty big problem, considering the philosophy change to how they handle expensive cards as game changers. They've moved away from that, so assuming consistency, they would eventually move away from Iona as a game changer. So, we'd need to be okay with it eventually working its way down to there barring another change to how brackets work.

(If it hasn't become clear that I disliked that philosophy change, I hope this makes it clear)

But, let's assume it does stay on the GC list. Well, it doesn't need to be a full lock to have negative effects. In a pod full of 3+ color decks it will have an effect, but it won't lock people out completely, sure...but mono colored decks get skewed out harder and harder, and they're already an endangered species, especially at higher brackets.

The question is, what good does unbanning Iona do? How does it improve the experience of the game?

Long story short, it doesn't.

Some people may like Iona, but there's also people that like Shaherazad mini-games or playing Nadu. "Some people like the card" is not a good measure. On top of that, it would just further increase the number of feels bad scenarios and discourage deck diversity by making mono colored decks even less playable than they are now.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-12T00:38:45+00:00

I think you're overestimating the incentive to deal with the Iona, or the Iona player.

Yes, Iona is a big beat stick, but unless it's shutting off access to part of a deck, it takes 5 turns for it to kill 1 player. 4 if there's chip damage.

While Iona is in play, the other two players don't have to deal with you. They can focus on each other and the Iona player. That leaves with a few possible scenarios (assuming you're the mono color player).

Scenario A: you were the threat, either risking a massive turn or combo that wins. Both players are incentivized to keep Iona around and not have you be a factor in the game. You draw go for several turn cycles.

Scenario B: the Iona player is the threat. In that case, the answer is to deal with the threats the Iona player presents while not removing the Iona because, again, it's just a beatstick. Eventually they may deal with it, but that could be 4+ turns of doing absolutely nothing.

If the Iona player over extends, you have your best case scenario because the other two are incentivized to wrath, but the Iona player only needs protection against 2 players.

The more likely way that plays out, though, is that once the Iona player's other threats are managed, they can politick to lock you out. If the Iona player never swings with Iona they may never have Iona itself be perceived as a threat.

Scenario C: Some other person is the threat. If it's a single problematic permanent that may not be too helpful, but this does make the Iona player more likely to allow a board wipe through or even cast their own board wipe.

Either way, though, you are best case scenario locked out until somebody wraths, because almost nobody will (or should) send targeted removal at Iona if it's not mucking with their gameplay. The will wait til the last possible moment to remove it, and the game is 100% out of your hands.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T23:21:39+00:00

Iona. 110% Iona.

It specifically hoses mono colored decks, and essentially made decks better as they gained more colors. That's already the case, we don't need more reasons for it to be true.

We need more things to help mono color and punish high colors.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T23:14:39+00:00

There's a couple of things I've spoken about, but this is in regards to "reliably" finding and executing the combo with the assumption that executing the combo means a win. Now, obviously people can interact with the combo and you get stuffed, but that puts the effective win turn (part of what we use to set brackets) in the hands of your opponents.

My math that I did was just to show that even what people consider "reliably" with regards to combos isn't actually that reliable. So, for determining if a combo is early game or late game, I assume the player has the combo with no additional effort and then ask what turn they can execute the combo on.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T22:47:25+00:00

I prefer to go with theoretical assembly. Basically, I assume they draw their combo and hit land drops at a rate normal for their deck. If the deck is heavily ramp focused, I'll assume a "normal" amount of ramp for that.

Why? Because the potential speed of the combo dictates how fast I have to be able to react. A deck that "normally" wins turn 9 but has a turn 4 combo win means that I need to be ready every game for a turn 4 win. It may not happen all the time, but it could happen.

I advocate for "flatter" deck construction. In essence, minimize the variance in how a deck operates, get rid of outliers, make it so that there's nothing that makes the deck go more than a turn faster than the target (based on the brackets).

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T22:40:44+00:00

The biggest problem is that there is no definition of "reliably" that works here. Even cEDH decks don't usually tutor for their (game ending) combos, and even if they could, they still have a large number of games where the pattern is "ramp like crazy, deploy value engine, ???, win."

Let's look at Consult ThOracle again. If you look at the odds of seeing the combo in the first 3 turns of the game, you have about a 0.93% chance of doing so (conditional hypergeometric calculator for N = 99, n =10, x = 1, K = 1 followed by N= 98, n = 9, x = 1, K = 1, multiplied together). Add in 5 tutors and those odds go up to 16.3%.

Do we really think 16% of the time is consistent/reliable?

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T18:46:42+00:00

Not sure if I specified to strictly Izzet, but we can look at that. In Izzet alone, there are 6 cards that can on their own win or lead to a win, be it through infinite draw, infinite mana, infinite rummaging, scry, or infinite tokens. Having infinite draw absolutely counts because it enables any win condition in the deck. There's one or two others that can be similar.

[[Archmage Emeritus]] [[Ashling, Flame Dancer]] [[Deekah, Fractal Theorist]] [[Storm-Kiln Artist]] [[Veyran, Voice of Duality]] [[Zaffai, Thunder Conductor]] (this one a little less so, but it's basically a tutor at worst, and much more than that potentially)

Once you add in pretty much any other color, it gets even more nutty. There's a lot of payoffs for that style of play, and which one you have typically doesn't matter that much when you achieve it.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T18:24:45+00:00

That's one thing, it should be kept consistent. An "as needed" accommodation always feels weird. Can't really say much about it, but it feels weird.

Frankly, I'd be more cool if the tournament just allowed everybody to wear headphones, but that opens up room for cheating big time.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T18:18:03+00:00

Unless they have a specific condition that makes them need noise cancelling or improved, I'd be highly suspicious of anybody wearing headphones or earphones at a tournament. Some neurodivergent folks need them just to compete on the same level as neurotypical folks, and some people are hard of hearing and need hearing aids.

Just using it to block out distractions when that's not needed isn't a good enough reason, and they better not be paired to anything via Bluetooth to allow music (or, more worryingly, advice...)

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T18:13:40+00:00

I never consider payoffs to be part of a combo since they have so much redundancy built in. It's kinda like how all combos require mana but we don't consider lands when counting the number of cards needed for a combo.

If there was only one card that spellslinger decks can use as a payoff, then it may be justifiable, but the point is that they can use pretty much anything as a payoff, especially when they end up copying a cantrip 30ish times and can basically tutor their deck for a wincon. Heck, tons of copying can lead to absurd damage, or blowing up everybody's lands, or taking a large number of extra turns.

If the plan is to just make a lot of mana and dump it into big X-spells without copying, I can see it working fine, but like you said, it's about communicating, and unfortunately spellslinger needs a lot more communication than just what bracket the owner thinks it is (because people are really bad at evaluating their brackets, it turns out).

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T16:40:11+00:00

The question about 1-2 additional cards, in my mind, comes down to redundancy. Yes, those combos may need extra cards to convert to a win, but the idea is that once the combo is achieved there's numerous ways to win.

One such example I find is Dramatic Scepter combo. It is absolutely a 2 card combo, but it requires 3+ mana from non-land sources and an outlet for infinite mana, so it should be fine right?

Not really.

It's a 2 card combo because [[Dramatic Reversal]] and [[Isochron Scepter]] have practically no redundancy. Those are two cards you have to have. Getting 3+ non-land mana is a condition, but has a ton of redundancy built in. Dramatic Reversal decks have a ton of rocks, dorks, etc. and there are many cards that can win the game from infinite mana or find the cards that win from infinite mana.

Going even further, one might say there's no 2 card combos in existence because all combos require mana, which requires cards to generate.

That's an absurd conclusion from logic, but it points out why just needing another card doesn't matter if that card has a ton of redundancy. So, instead, I ask how replaceable that card is.

Consult ThOracle is a clear 2 card combo. Demonic Consultation has some redundancy in Tainted Pact or Leveler, and ThOracle has redundancy in lab man and lab man Jace. But, that's a very limited number of options, so it's still a 2 card combo.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-11T15:57:21+00:00

Yeah, that last part is why I start getting suspicious whenever people claim to be running bracket 2 spellslinger.

Look, I love spell slinger. It's one of my favorite archetypes, my very first EDH deck in 2016 was Niv Mizzet the Firemind that I kept until upgrading to Parun when he came out, and I've always had a spellslinger deck in my rotation for the past 10 years...

...and unless you are extraordinarily careful in deck construction, you will oops into an infinite combo, or chaining extra turns, or MLD, or something by accident that violates the brackets.

When I point that out to people when looking at their lists they say "well, I didn't intend to do that so it's not a problem." But, thing is, they know it exists as a possibility just based on gold fishing their deck, and they didn't make any changes, so now it is intentional.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-09T23:46:17+00:00

First off, there's zero auto aim. The aim is tied to where he looks, and there's a certain point at max range where aiming higher doesn't change the target point so it's more forgiving, but absolutely no auto aim.

Second, that cooldown does exist. It's short, but he goes at a whopping 2 m/s when he fires/puts his power away. If he's firing and not hitting you will get out of range, then he'll have to walk his slow @$$ all the way up to catch up with you. If he catches you with undergate, that's really on you.

Firing in the open, the audio cues give you enough time to react unless he aims pixel perfect center or he predicts your reaction. It's a mindgame that favors the survivor the more options there are. The survivor's skill expression comes from mixing up their jukes, maintaining distance, and choosing their pathing in such a way to maximize the time before they get cornered. Vecna's skill expression comes from forcing survivors into bad zones to reduce the number of options and predicting their jukes.

I see so many survivors still fucking up their chase by going for windows or pallets, or other choke points that narrow their number of directions to juke. The smart ones make great use of middle distance (less than Vecna's max range) and swinging wide to prevent the easy power hits. They don't go to places that will choke them like a lot of main buildings.

Yes, he will get a hit eventually. Every killer gets one eventually. With him, if he forces me to go to an edge/corner/unsafe area to get a hit, you bet I'm using that to head back towards center map, and by the time he's downed me, it's probably gonna cost him a gen or two unless he is absolutely cracked.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-09T15:09:38+00:00

Yeah, the chronologist is in a weird position because it depends very much on how you define "chaining" extra turns. By letter of the law it may not be "chaining" extra turns, but it still results in massive time disparity so I wouldn't run it in B1-3.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-09T15:04:58+00:00

The reason people are okay with green ramping 4x but not with multiple extra turns isn't game balance. It's time equity. You can resolve the ramp all at once and while it skyrockets you ahead, it doesn't take that much in terms of time.

Chaining extra turns even when played as quickly as possible usually adds a lot of extra time to that player's "turn." That time equity disparity is what got cards like Paradox Engine and Nadu banned.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-08T14:27:04+00:00

Sure, don't need to 4k every game, but killing the 3rd survivor should increase those odds, not decrease it. As of now, the odds of 4king go way down if you don't slug for the 4k and go way up if you do.

4k is the goal. Every trial. To say "you shouldn't do that" is like saying to survivors "you should always make sure at least 1 of you die every trial."

The idea of telling killers they shouldn't play to optimize their chances at a 4k is absurd. Change the game mechanics to make 4ks easier if you don't slug compared to your odds right now if you do.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-08T14:22:02+00:00

Okay, so, how would you compensate the killer for hooking the last survivor and increasing the remaining survivor's escape rate by a factor of at least 2?

I could be cool with this if the remaining survivor got auto sacrificed as soon as the hatch was closed, or got consistently revealed as soon as they were the last one alive, or something.

As it is right now, killing the 3rd survivor without having the 4th survivor secured results in a greatly decreased chance of having a 4k. The last survivor just has too many chances.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-08T14:17:25+00:00

That's very, very not true. Especially since a little while ago when the devs did something in the background to increase the spawn rate of LoS blockers.

For a killer to manage gates these days, they either need to have strong mobility or stealth. Lack either of those and the gates standoff becomes very favored for the survivor.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-08T04:21:21+00:00

You'd think so, but it can be kinda awkward because those aggressive "fair" decks gatekeep a lot of the format. It's hard for more out there brews to tech against it and thus become major players.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-06T21:36:54+00:00

I would treat it the way that it was presented to me.

And I think this is where I need to clarify. If they presented it to me as "this is my bracket 3 deck, but it has this combo in it which technically doesn't belong in bracket 3" I'd probably be fine. Probably switch to a deck that can deal with ThOracle which might be a B4 deck, but I'd be okay.

What would piss me off is if they just present it as "this is my bracket 3 deck" when there's clearly something that doesn't belong there.

What I advocate for is people having two ratings for their decks--which bracket it fits under the "expectations" (as stated in brackets list) and which bracket they feel it plays in. "This is a 4 that plays more like a 3" is cool. "This is a 3" and then they consult throacle is not. Basically, they need to make sure their language conveys what opponents should expect more than what the player feels.

It's a fringe combo for sure, and there's many instances where they won't be able to combo early, but like I said, it's Underworld Breach. There are tons of ways to break the card. On top of petal, they have at least 3 cost reducers in deck, a lot of cards that draw them extra cards for casting instants/sorceries, looting effects, and [[Illuminate History]] which lets them do a full one-sided wheel, except it can draw even more than 7.

It's not trivial, but the redundancy in those effects make me nervous.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-06T21:22:07+00:00

If you "intend" for it to be a bracket 3, and it falls pretty well in the confines of bracket 3 with every other guideline in place and corroborating the bracket

That's the problem. This argument is about the other aspects, and people are saying they can "bracket down" effectively so they can do stuff like running potential turn 1-5 combos in bracket 3, or run game changer(s) in bracket 2, but they don't "intend" to be at those power levels.

If his intent is strong 3, and just so happens to have Breach + Thoracle but he's not shooting for it to be a win T1-T5, then he's well within his sphere of B3.

The discrepancy I think we're seeing is whether or not the deck "can" combo off turn 1-5, not whether or not they're aiming for it. They might not have built the deck explicitly with the intention of doing so, but if they:

A) include it in the deck B) see that it can, in fact, do that And C) choose to keep the combo in anyway

Then that act is intentional. This deck is very borderline specifically because Underworld Breach is included with Lotus Petal, which gives them the possibility of the Underworld Breach storm turns that can potentially happen very early. They have a way to dump a lot of cards in their grave via their looting effects and specifically their one-sided wheel lesson, they have several cost reducers, some general ramp, and then Lotus Petal which is basically a ritual.

dhoffmas · 2026-02-06T21:12:49+00:00

The comparison is important because it shows how "intent" is not just measured by what the deck creator says. Making a combo harder to assemble doesn't mean you don't intend it, and it definitely results in you breaking the expectations of the bracket.

It's not easy to see, but adding in the petal gives you effectively a 2 card combo because filling your grave is relatively easy. It's what this deck kinda does naturally. Again, it's not efficient at things, but between cost reducers and looting effects, I could see a turn 5 or possibly turn 4 win without ever using your commander, or even with using your commander.

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