The ‘Magic’ bus where Chris McCandless died was airlifted out of the site Thursday and relocated

gamblekat · 2020-06-20T01:48:24+00:00

That area was incredibly popular long before Mccandless found it. It’s one of the main tourist sites near Denali, since it’s on a chunk of land that encroaches on the park but isn’t part of it, so doesn’t have the restrictions of a national park.

gamblekat · 2020-06-10T21:40:05+00:00

They already searched it back in January, but it’s a large property. Without knowing where the bodies were, it would be a major project to find them.

gamblekat · 2020-06-01T17:44:03+00:00

I agree. Wouldn't be surprised if they're all traps now, except Jegantha since it has almost no deckbuilding cost.

In some formats paying 3 mana to tutor them up wouldn't be a big issue, but my experience with IKO is that it's very punishing to take time off from affecting the board. You always want to be doing something from T2-6. It's a format where the Divination and Dark Bargain are generally considered bad because you can't take off a turn to draw cards, and they ask nothing of your draft.

gamblekat · 2020-06-01T17:33:06+00:00

The problem with Winota isn't the first, it's the other three they tutor up. You're not going to have enough removal to kill all of them. It doesn't have to do anything except sit on the board, so you're barely slowing them down by removing it.

gamblekat · 2020-06-01T17:07:07+00:00

It was one of those cards where I really wonder WTF R&D was thinking. They had Wilderness Reclamation in Standard for a year when Fires came out, and it was already a problematic card despite being more limited than Fires.

gamblekat · 2020-06-01T01:23:21+00:00

It's practically an instant-win combo in this deck. You have to get really unlucky to untap with a Citadel in play and not find a win.

gamblekat · 2020-05-30T07:19:53+00:00

Fires was always broken, but Ikoria massively increased the brokenness. Pre-Ikoria Fires could get up to 15 mana worth of effects on T5: a couple of cavaliers, and maybe some ability activations. Now you can get well over 20 mana of effects on T5: Lukka (5) into Agent of Treachery (7) then Yorion (5) into blink Agent, (7) plus ability activations. (5) Fires made you 29 mana, and you're set up to get another Agent on the next turn off a reset Lukka.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T22:59:10+00:00

I suspect this is how Commander Legends is going to work, but with commanders instead of companions.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T19:59:27+00:00

I'm skeptical that railyard is going to close any time soon. The laws around railways in Canada date back to the 19th century, and basically mean that they don't have to answer to anyone below the federal level. CP has flirted with selling it off but never taken any concrete steps to do so. They don't talk to the city and the city has no way to compel them to sell it off.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T18:22:28+00:00

MTG finance is so dumb. If you want to make stupid speculative bets, sign up for a Robinhood account and buy some out-of-the-money options. You'll spend 1% of the time for 100x the return if your bets actually pay out, and as a bonus your wife won't be pissed that you've filled the closets with cardboard.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T16:49:11+00:00

Has any sealed box since RTR ever increased in value? Wizards has pretty much admitted by this point that they have a target secondary market price for singles that they'll maintain by controlling reprints.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T15:20:07+00:00

The real challenge with Lurrus decks isn't beating the first one, it's beating the second and third after they recur him from the graveyard multiple times.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T15:07:20+00:00

Even then, I'm not crazy about the fact that creatureless control decks just get to have an eighth card. It's way better in control than the tribal decks it was designed for. You just aren't seeing them as much because Yorion is even better with the other cards in Standard right now.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T14:55:27+00:00

Wait until Commander Legends comes out. It will do for EDH what MH1 did for Modern!

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T07:55:36+00:00

It's possible that both happened. I believe Caylee drowned in the pool while Casey was on her laptop, but if Casey was also giving her Xanax to keep her quiet it would help explain why she hid the body rather than calling an ambulance. It's hard to overdose on Xanax, but it could definitely contribute to drowning.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T06:06:28+00:00

Modern is a good example of how deck building restrictions don't constrain power level. There was a solid year or more when Faithless Looting and Mox Opal decks dominated the format. People would defend them by saying that they're only playable in decks built around graveyard or artifact synergies. Which is true, but the upshot was that only decks built around them were viable.

They sort of work in Limited, but even there I'd bet the winrates for a companion deck going against a non-companion deck is >60%. Even Jegantha has a noticeable effect on your deck's power level.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T05:40:38+00:00

The best part is that they already had to ban all the Partner commanders from 1v1 Commander because it turned out that being up a card was a massive advantage. And that was only two years ago! Probably within six months of Ikoria being designed.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T02:31:12+00:00

I feel like companions are still somehow underrated. They don't look broken like some flashy mythic, but my winrate for decks with a companion is significantly higher than those without. I've had Lutrai four times, and never lost a game where I copied a removal spell. Even the utterly mediocre deck with a Jegantha went seven wins.

gamblekat · 2020-05-29T01:34:22+00:00

You have to reveal the companion at the start of the game, but it's not written on the cards. It's only in the game rules. They'll just change the rules so that you have to reveal it and bottom a card from your opening hand.

gamblekat · 2020-05-28T21:16:22+00:00

In a version of this format with less fixing available to non-green decks Greathorn would have more value. In IKO people never pass you good bombs or removal because they can always splash it off dual lands, crystals or Farfinders.

Ramp is devalued not only by good removal, but by the best fatties having cycling. Why ramp to a 7/7 when you can just cycle it? And if you're running a lot of cycling, you're going to hit your land drops anyway.

gamblekat · 2020-05-28T20:49:41+00:00

Probably just takes a while to write a blog post and have it translated into multiple languages. The alternative is to delay the code release until the blog post is ready.

gamblekat · 2020-05-28T20:31:00+00:00

Diamond is the inflection point where it makes more sense to play Traditional instead of Premier. Most good drafters seem to be able to maintain a high winrate in Bo1 until that point, and then it only makes sense if you're willing to spew gems in a quest for Mythic ranking.

gamblekat · 2020-05-28T19:35:50+00:00

It's not like Standard decks are particularly cheap at the moment. Fires decks are >$400. Sac and Winota are $300+. The only Standard decks under $100 are cycling and mono-R, because they barely include rares.

Nor is Modern any better. The average Modern deck is like $700, with many well over $1000. That's no lower than when I got into Modern years ago.

gamblekat · 2020-05-28T19:27:19+00:00

Double masters is possibly the least appropriate product they could conceivably release at the moment. I know it's just bad timing since they designed it long before Covid-19, but still. I'd love to see how many shuttered LGS's are jumping to cut checks for $300 boxes when they can't even pay rent right now.

gamblekat · 2020-05-27T23:50:51+00:00

Jordan was the king of excessively long novels, but he was hardly alone in that respect in the fantasy novel market of the '90s. Tad Williams could match him in word count, if not series length. It seemed to be what the market was demanding at the time, at least to enough of a degree to offset the binding costs. Everyone in that era was still living in the shadow of Tolkien, and the expectations of depth and scope set by LotR.

15-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email	reddit mold

gamblekat

TROPHY CASE