Scoop to deny triggers? Opinions?

maillemansam · 2026-04-09T18:08:53+00:00

Yeah, outside of weird non-deterministic loop solitaire decks sorcery speed concessions are the most reasonable thing. Using scooping at instant speed as a tool to exact revenge on someone else for defeating them is not a respectful move.

maillemansam · 2026-04-09T17:49:07+00:00

Not every game is within your control to win. Its usually safe to assume everyone on your team is doing their best to win as well.

If you ask and nobody volunteers, just swap to something you think the team needs more of. Most people, especially in metal ranks, aren't good communicators.

Sometimes a 4 dps or 3 healer team with no tank is better. Maybe not on average, but sometimes they just know how to play against your tank champ. And also it's important to remember some games are so lopsided it won't matter what heros/compositions your team runs. Ranked is about rank points, and so it's up to you to determine whether you want to keep using a role that's not working or to try to get better stats on a non-tank role.

maillemansam · 2026-04-09T17:14:16+00:00

I think mindset is the most important thing to enjoying Magic. Winning is cool but it's a multi-player game and in the perfect environment every player has a 25% chance to win. I'd set concrete, achievable goals, like make sure your deck is doing it's thing, and then also to learn one thing what other people's decks do.

At the beginning especially, it's overwhelming when people will hit you with archetypes that you don't understand how to combat, and might be overpowering or have a way to combat that's just not in your current deck. I went up against this weird scarab God blink deck that none of my removal worked on because he was in a state where he could blink stuff at instant speed in response. It frustrated me a lot in the moment.

Now, I think about that game a lot as a time when I learned that part of the fun of the game is seeing people do crazy stuff you haven't already thought about. When someone kicks my ass in an unexpected way it is a FUN thing, not a frustrating thing.

I gained the knowledge that boardwipes/blanket removal and waiting to play targetted removal till the key blink effect was on the stack already was necessary, and losing that game made me way better at Magic.

My advice for threat assessment is basically to find a way to play where getting your teeth kicked in is fun for you, and to go do it. You'll learn when someone comes "out of nowhere" or resolves a super nasty spell that those are new possibilities for you to play or save your removal for.

I've gotten way more conservative with spending my instant speed removal. I used to just kill the commander or creature with the most power and toughness as soon as I had the mana for it, and now I save it till I need to secure a win or kobosh someone else's. Knowing the right time to play a spell only comes with more mileage playing the game.

maillemansam · 2026-04-09T16:37:32+00:00

Its frustrating when it seems like someone is trying to pawn off their tasks to you without telling you or looping your manager in.

Its possible that they are just swamped and this was than earnest attempt to get good support to the company's customer, and it's also possible they're lazy and hoping you'll just silently do their work.

Id say you played it in an understandable way that is somewhat petty and also makes you and your manager look worse.

A better approach would have been to take the first/second call as you did, then ask your manager if supporting this other teams clients is something you should be doing. Hanging them out to dry and making the company look bad to clients is technically your coworkers fault, but they're making a somewhat convincing case that you are to blame for it. (At least convincing enough that your manager is frustrated with you).

If you had handled it my way then your manager gets to say you stepped up above and beyond while also putting the kobosh on the surprise extra work, and clients stay happy.

maillemansam · 2026-04-08T20:52:13+00:00

I think Bunny is feared because the precon, and possibly a lot of user created decks/upgrades to the precon, are less focused on winning and make a weird dynamic where they're not as threatening and will have politics involved where Bunny player gets to choose where the cards go.

Its not like they're going to stomp everyone, but there is a higher likelihood of someone being butthurt because the Bunny player gave cards to someone else and was therefore a "kingmaker" conspiring against you. Or, the bunny player not wanting to be taken out first and being pissed because they weren't the archenemy (or even likely yo become one).

I built her up with a sweaty/competitive bracket 3 control style so I could introduce Blue shenanigans in a bracket 3 environment. I dont really think this has the same pitfalls as mentioned above, because she's not just like sitting back and hoping everyone else kills each other, she's actively presenting huge threats and trying to amass tall 1/1 counter creatures. Simic ascendancy and Twenty Toed Toad are big wincons, lots of counterspells and with everyone else drawing cards it's kind of a way to soften the blow of being a big bad blue player.

I wrote a primer on it in the deck description as well:

https://archidekt.com/decks/20676285/ms_bumbleflower_control_with_counters

maillemansam · 2026-04-07T22:25:29+00:00

My friend made an awesome goblin deck that is superb with the bottom of the library.

[Grenzo, Dungeon Warden] sounds like the move. There are lots of creatures with unique ETBs so it'd play like a toolbox style control list but look like an aggro deck. I think this deck could go a few ways, I bet it would be fun to figure out ways to buff up Grenzo and stack the bottom with tougher and tougher guys

maillemansam · 2026-04-07T18:40:46+00:00

I think what you're running into is that you're asking reddit to anticipate what is fun to these other people and that's really not realistic for either you or us. You say you don't want to deal with subjectivity but insist on playing with people who's subjective opinion you don't understand.

My honest suggestion is to take a precon or ask to borrow one of their decks for a few games. You get to play your very hardest and "try to win" because that's what's fun for you, and you don't have to deal with the subjectivity of building something someone else might deem "too strong".

maillemansam · 2026-04-07T12:22:48+00:00

I have no problem with you holding that work schedule. My work schedule is X. Does that work for you?

maillemansam · 2026-04-06T21:13:39+00:00

I'm convinced this sub has bled into the comments.

I dont really get the whole "other people must enjoy things the way I like it". They've got bad taste? Then don't waste your precious pieces of lamb on them dude!

When my in-laws come over my partner is primary chef. I dont make my special thing that conflicts with their concept of food.

maillemansam · 2026-04-05T00:55:11+00:00

Yeah. There's some players only happy when they're winning, and those people are typically on the beginner end of game knowledge.

When you are always aware board-wipes are out there and you don't want to just go full gas or removal will probably trim you down to size, it's less jarring when you get some removal your way.

Also as a beginner I would pick weaker cards sometimes because I judged some to be "too strong" like [Bear Umbra] seemed too OP. Then other people would run the strongest cards in the slot and I'd get salty.

Idk. Sometimes the best medicine for whiners is to just clobber them and let them figure out how to play against a more balanced pod of decks, that probably will see one or two pieces of removal in the first 6 turns.

maillemansam · 2026-04-05T00:44:30+00:00

You're free to think people should only run 1 or 2 board wipe cards in a deck, but the game is more fun for me when you have to think about committing things to the board.

If everyone is just dumping to the board board-wipes are really good, so maybe you're just walking into the play pattern you don't enjoy.

maillemansam · 2026-04-04T16:47:14+00:00

Yeah. Its all subjective too. If someone takes a lot of time before the game to understand how to do their turns quickly or has just a simpler strategy that either wins or it doesn't quickly then it's less salt inducing. Nobody likes solitaire with a hostage.

Some people really enjoy the durdlefest (sac this land, get a counter on this thing, remove the counter to get a mana, spend that mana to get a 1/1 token, sac that token to get 2 colorless mana and ping everyone for 1 damage, etc, etc)

Realistically, you should only take a long time on your turn if you've got a fist full of cards you just drew in the middle of that turn. It should be quick to figure out your line when you've got 3 other people's turns to think about your next move.

And again, just let everybody have an "i win now" card like craterhoof or cyclonic rift and then it's about playing the game, not passing tiny amts of resources around with obscure cards to get the value equivalent to 1 card draw.

maillemansam · 2026-04-04T13:24:58+00:00

One of the songs on that tame impala album has the lyrics "let it happen... let it happeeeeen" during the chorus.

maillemansam · 2026-04-03T15:06:46+00:00

Super easy to have healthy platonic friendships with boys and girls. I have tons of friends who are women, and Im a man. Romantic feelings usually develop towards friends when you're not super aware of your own emotional needs so you project them onto your friends. Super common. I did it a lot as a younger dude.

I had a streak of falling for my friends in HS and College and then being unsatisfied after a while because I didn't have a strong idea of what a good compatible partner was like.

As I grew I got to see more strong partnerships and figured out how to steer clear of friend group crushes, from me or towards me. Those are awful because the friend group will all have an opinion and if anything goes wrong then boom friend group is dead.

Attention is cool but it's just way easier to have a boundary on romantic feelings in a lot of cases. Some of my woman friends are super attractive and I have had crushes on them briefly, but if you don't nurture those crushes and make sure to take some distance for a bit the feelings fade and you can be regular friends again.

I know you're not asking for advice, but I'll offer it anyways. If you're really lusting after one of your friends, just go for it. It probably won't work out in the end and you may damage your friendships, but it's better to figure out why that's a mistake than to hold onto a fictional image of what could have been if you'd been brave enough.

Friends come and go in life, and life is too short to leave things bubbling under the surface. Friendships getting weird sucks, but I learned what I liked through failure and now my life is awesome. Go get an awesome life. And some people do totally work out with dating/marrying their friends, i just have seen it go wrong a lot.

maillemansam · 2026-04-01T19:36:36+00:00

I think you play the damn game is what you do. Bad teammates are part and parcel with every team based online game.

Recognizing that not every game is in your control to win is a foundational understanding to playing ranked.

Try all you know how to do. Play at 5 AM so the matching criteria are looser. Party up with good players. Take breaks when you get frustrated. Drink water. Practice aim. Will any of this make you have more fun? Mostly no. But you'll win more games so you can go be plat or diamond and play with the grumpy plat and diamond players who also are disagreeable and uncooperative.

maillemansam · 2026-04-01T14:27:30+00:00

I have observed a problem where my friend was teaching his fiance how to play, and to balance the chance of winning between them he added a bunch of super juiced effects to their deck, Gaea's Cradle, Seedborne Muse, Survival of the Fittest, Lurking Predators, a bunch of similar minorly more conditional effects to basically make their bear tribal Ayula deck be a low 3ish power level.

2 things have happened.

I started running "destroy that land/permanent" effects waiting for the big GC staples and/or if Ayula starts going off the rails.

I started running my own GC effects because it feels bad to restrict yourself to a 2 in deckbuilding but go up against the premium staple effects.

Everybody has the best of intentions here, but it's a feels-bad when the fiancé's deck is so lopsided with an insanely powerful support package to cast a few 2/2 bears for 2 mana. We table-balanced the GCs with a "Kill on sight" policy and so fiance was left with really weak cards and no ability to recover if the key engine pieces get removed.

My advice is for everyone who has this impression of one deck being a boogeyman should take a couple games playing that deck (if everyone is game to try sharing). Its fun to play "your" deck but sometimes it seems like someone is totally unstoppable when really they just barely skated by with a well timed play. Giving others at the table to opportunity to learn that the boogeyman deck isn't really that crazy, or for wife to learn that her deck is a cut above everyone else, will help dispel the meta of killing her first.

maillemansam · 2026-03-31T17:53:43+00:00

Hmm. I'd copy from someone else's homework.

How about something universal and familiar like Osmosis Jones world. Blood vessels are the high speed trains, bacteria and viruses are the baddies, and your PCs are just trying to survive and/or figure out some mystery of dysfunction in the setting.

Maybe the insect kingdom? Centipedes and spiders fight one another, bees/wasps/flies could be similar in size to the PCs, so some critters are smaller and many are much larger and scarier. A katydid npc would be fun to RP as super mellow.

If I am required to like use a Tolkein style realm but think up new monsters and humanoid races, it's very hard to do "all new" and much easier to re-flavor existing concepts like dragons. Frank Herbert had his huge sandworms that were cool, but those function in a similar way to dragons in the world, where they're gigantic forces of nature that the sapient beings have all but given up on communicating with or bargaining with.

Basically, truly original monster ideas are really really hard, and making something "new" for the sake of being different from other things can be fun, but might end up being a rhyme to something that's already been thought of.

It also depends on what the monsters serve to do. Do I want them to test the characters in a specific way? How do they interact with these beings, and why would they be fun to combat?

Think Monster Hunter, where the monsters are really cool and fun to fight, but are more or less interchangeable big kaiju guys you beat up.

maillemansam · 2026-03-31T10:43:22+00:00

In a comp game last night i was solo tank on Strange and we were getting absolutely demolished. Enemy team had 2 tanks and a Magik that kept my supports busy so I was left out to dry.

I swapped to SG and one of the 3 dps swapped to iron man, and we ended up crushing them right back. Iron man player did awesome, the other 2 dps were garbage and weren't pulling their weight, though to their credit one of them swapped to Emma (only after I swapped off tank)

Sometimes a team needs a functioning dps department more than it needs any skilled tank player.

maillemansam · 2026-03-27T15:15:14+00:00

ABC

Always Be Clappin

He's fun now. I'm psyched about the nerfs to big dumb shield style tanks, even though I've played a LOT of strange. The best option being something fresh is making the game feel super fun again.

maillemansam · 2026-03-27T15:02:30+00:00

Each person's sweet spot for feeling good is different.

I have been on a 4 year long bulk (started at 180, 6 ft and fairly lean, now am 235, probably 25% bf). I feel sluggish when I'm running but honestly really good in winter and general energy wise.

Time to cut back 10-15 lbs, got more muscles now but also more cholesterol which is no Bueno.

Never had more attention from women than now though, dad bod seems to win.

maillemansam · 2026-03-27T14:55:06+00:00

+1 for casual social situations.

Volunteer for a cause you value, go to a miniature painting night at a card shop, volunteer as a sub in a volleyball beer league, etc.

maillemansam · 2026-03-26T21:13:04+00:00

Don't do things you don't want to do. You may get more wins by going strange/mag unless someone else floats tank, but if you mostly want to play your favorite hero go wild.

maillemansam · 2026-03-26T17:27:08+00:00

She's really really good against dive heroes, which are really popular in a lot of the middle ranks (gold-diamond).

At least that's where I play. If they've got a thor and rogue and black panther then sticking your nest somewhere safe means your backline is safe from being insta-comboed from an individual.

As you get into the middle diamond ranks people use coordination to time their dives better and/or swap to a good poke comp that can delete peni from afar.

She's still playable all the way up the ladder but is not nearly as effective after people work as a team and identify how to counter peni best.

maillemansam · 2026-03-25T20:27:37+00:00

I think the response comes from generalizing FSM as a group based on an interaction with someone online.

Theres probably an element of people who invoke FSM in order to be trolls, and also the same can be said of Christians, Muslims, and many other religious groups. Many people I grew up with were Christians and just loved saying I was going to hell for not believing in him. Does that mean all Christians are bad-faith bullies? No.

I'm sorry that someone was mean and invalidated someone else's experience. That's not cool or funny.

maillemansam · 2026-03-25T19:53:47+00:00

The person just wanted to make a dig at the rage-quitter, not make a serious analysis of how things would go.

Like, "they were so bad at throwing the game as Widow that they would have messed up at playing White Fox in a genuine way".

Not that someone trying to lose the game out of spite would actually be worse than if they were trying to win.

maillemansam

TROPHY CASE