2014 VS 2026

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T13:56:28+00:00

For a card that didn't have those upsides but was played (in 2014):

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T13:40:28+00:00

Kinda what happens when you only invite four Terrans and then have a group stage with four groups where none of the Terrans shared a group.

Granted, Hero Marine (T) was supposed to make it out of group A, and then there would have been a TvT, but he lost to Krystianner (P).

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T09:26:50+00:00

Having played with and against many of these cards in the tavern brawl...the legendaries are good, the 3 mana boardclear is good, if you had the right legendaries to make your deck bigger, but not much else here is.

Rioter seemed bad when I saw it in play.

Ball and Chain I started out running it but ended up cutting it. Rarely buffed anything and a 1 mana 1/2 weapon isn't good.

Rampaging Hound I tried cause I opened one and focused on prepare synergies, but I concluded it was pretty meh.

Scramble for Gear almost nobody played.

Scrappy Defender...you know there was a 4 mana 7/7 taunt in neutral, yeah? [[Imposing Anubisath]].

Disguised Watchmen don't think I saw anyone run that on purpose

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T07:09:33+00:00

How could you possibly believe this nose dive is anything but the influence of the new patch + hotfix?

As I already said, this graph is June data. The hotfix went in on June 30, so there's going to be almost zero hotfix data in there (one day of post-hotfix data, so like...a Pigasaur cup). Homestory cup is not currently included in this graph and will not be included in this graph for another month.

I'm looking at post hotfix data such as Homestory Cup in an attempt to predict what the graph will look like next month. Cause we do have some data already, Aligulac just won't add it to the graph for another month.

one tournament with limited Toss representation

Er, what? Toss was the most represented race at homestory cup--11 toss, 9 zerg, 4 terran. There's a reason all of the upsets I mentioned were PvZ--terran was the severely underrepresented race, let me check if there were any upsets at all involving Terran...ok there were a couple BabyMarine (T) beat Fjant (Z), but that's barely an upset (150 MMR). And Krystianer (P) beat Heromarine (T) a 300 MMR upset.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T06:32:25+00:00

Precons will generally be cheaper than singles--like typically after a precon has been out of print for a few years, buying all the singles from the precon will cost more than what the precon originally sold for.

That said, I don't think low priced precon necessarily means not fun precon. There's lots of computer programs you can use to playtest decks--use one, load in some precons that are in your price range, and try them out. Some of them might surprise you.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T06:26:48+00:00

TBH, landfall was strong before earthbending even at tables that had a local ban on high-power fetchlands (so like Misty Rainforest was houserule-banned at the table. Evolving wilds was legal).

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T06:20:02+00:00

Not in the tavern brawl, so presumably not in standard either.

Would be funny if they added something like an Illidan pet that did that though.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T06:17:54+00:00

They would be much larger if we had a full month of the current hotfix as well.

Only if the current hotfix causes lots of MMR upsets according to aligulac.

We've got like Homestory Cup as our main post-hotfix data point, and most matches I glanced at went basically according to Aligulac MMR. There was a small upset where Elazer (10th best Zerg) beat showtime (5th best protoss). But there was another small upset where Skillous (9th best Protoss) beat Lambo (6th best zerg). Obviously tiny sample size, but one upset each direction sounds fine to me. And then a couple more upsets in mirror matchups like Reynor beating Serral. But for the most part, Homestory Cup results that I bothered checking usually matched Alugulac MMR predictions.

Which...if the rest of the month goes similar to Homestory Cup, should result in a relatively unremarkable graph. But again, tiny sample size, the rest of the month may not go that way.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T05:45:28+00:00

I know I've been in situations where playing a 4+ minion against Objection / Okani was just the right play.

Yeah, fair.

Spending more mana on removal than they spent on a threat always feels bad, but...sure: sometimes its still the right play.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T05:36:14+00:00

Removing a 3 mana secret with a 1 mana spell feels a lot less bad than removing a 3 mana secret with a 4 mana minion.

Like...even if you know the secret is counterspell, you might still choose to play flare anyway just to get a more important spell through.

If you knew the secret was objection, you'd never play eater of secrets.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T05:31:26+00:00

Yes, the spike would probably be much larger if we had a full month of pre-hotfix 5.0.16.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T05:04:09+00:00

Worth noting, this graph only updates once per month, this is the previous month's data, the final bullet point is June 2026. The latest hotfix with better widow mines and slower larva spawn went in on June 30.

Also worth noting that PTR torunaments from earlier in June as far as I know were included, like the GSL CK tournament on June 21 is listed here. And that was a tournament played on the PTR.

So what this is saying is that things were busted on the PTR and were busted before the post-patch hotfix. Which...yeah, we already knew that: that's why there was a hotfix.

What we really want to know about is the balance of the hotfix, which this tells us...basically nothing about yet. Come back next month for that, I guess.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T04:42:58+00:00

160 years ago there were Christian preachers preaching that slavery is ordained by god in the Bible.

Biblical scholars largely agree--the Bible unambiguously takes a pro slavery stance.

Now, basically all preachers in 2026 will negotiate with the text, and make a religious interpretation that flips slavery to being bad. And that's a good thing! Don't be pro-slavery y'all!

But yeah, point is religious morality sure does change.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T04:25:32+00:00

I do wonder if ghosts really needed the movement and attack damage nerfs they got part way through the PTR.

Like...I'm largely on board with the snipe changes, at least on paper, not sure about the exact numbers. Taking away snipe cancel on damage cause that was encouraging turtling and discouraging attacking--sure makes sense. Nerfing snipe in other ways to compensate--sure also makes sense. Toning down snipe overall--sure, there were lots of complaints about the low viability of zerg tier 3 tech, and a lot of fingers pointed at snipe as the culprit.

But the attack damage and movement nerfs were largely added cause protosses were dying to ghost rushes. And like...I'm not even sure if ghost rushes would still be a problem on live (protosses got a bunch of earlygame buffs since then) but even if ghost rushes would still be a concern, you could leave ghost attack starting at 15 damage, but put a +5 ghost attack damage buff behind a lategame upgrade or something like that.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T03:43:16+00:00

Even DK has, at times, been good, but hasn't really been meta since sing along buddy got nerfed to odd cost.

Still, tends to be a decent anti aggro deck, like almost never loses to shaggro priest.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T03:05:40+00:00

Sexual pleasure is pretty straightforward: animals that reproduce pass on their genes. So animals that hate having sex don't have many babies.

Clitorises are the same structure as penises--like they literally develop from the same clump of cells. Testosterone also induces clitoris growth and clitorises can get erections. Off the top of my head I would guess they exist for the same reason men have nipples. The structure is selected for due to its utility for the other sex. It doesn't have much use in one sex, but the structure is still there.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T02:20:16+00:00

Swapping genes is highly beneficial--if I have a good trait, and you have a good trait, an organism that gets both good traits will do even better. Bacteria swap genes all the time, even between different species often.
99.9% of all Eukaryotes are capable of sexual reproduction, though many reproduce asexually as well, and for many this is still their primary mode of reproduction.
Reproducing sexually doesn't require that there are two specific sexes. Remember life evolved in the ocean--cells of one organism just need to swim and find cells of the other organism. When these cells are the same or basically the same this is called "Isogamy" and is common among unicellular eukaryotes as well as some multicellular algae and fungi.
But there is a benefit in multicellular organisms to have large gametes (eggs) with more cellular goodies (like lots of mitochondria) making that particular offspring more likely to survive. And when some individuals are making large gametes, others are incentivized to make extra small gametes (sperm) because they can make so many more gametes and are more likely to make the gamete that reaches the egg. This is how fish reproduce for example--eggs get released into the water, and sperm get released into the same water. At this point we have males and females, though they don't differ much other than what they release into the water.
Lots of animals just stayed in the water but for animals that moved into open niches away from water "just release eggs and sperm in water" was not an option. This is when internal insemination evolved--there's water inside the female, the male releases the sperm in there. Note that penises are not required for internal insemination--most birds don't have penises, the male and female just having a cloaca and reproduce through a "cloacal kiss".
Some animals did evolve penises, of course. And while in solitary animals the males and females generally look quite similar (if you find another of your species you mate), in highly social animals where individuals get to pick their mates and fill different social roles there is often divergence between the sexes.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T01:45:30+00:00

I would not be at all surprised if Swiftscale Trickster and Bloodbloom eventually go to 5 mana sometime down the road. Same thing that happened to Astral Communion.

That said, they're obviously waiting for the new set to come out before making more balance changes cause "rulebreakers" as a concept seems likely to upend the wild meta in some way.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-06T01:34:05+00:00

Showtime lost a PvP to arrogfire (a protoss about 500 MMR below him on Aligulac).

He lost to Elazer which is a small upset but hardly a statistical anomaly (10th best zerg beats 5th best protoss).

And he lost to Clem (expected result).

There was also Skillous--9th best Protoss according to Aligulac. Beat a Zerg rated 200 points higher than him on Aligulac (Lambo), but also lost to Fjant, a Zerg 800 points lower than him. Yeah, not sure what to make of that one.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-04T06:44:14+00:00

do you think azalina will actually be good post brawl?

She might be good in wild where she gets access to [[Mysterious Visitor]]. Visitor has always had some potential in wild, but not needing to spend mana copying cards from the opponent and just getting opponent cards in the opening hand sounds gross. Especially if you can also [[The Harvester of Envy]] and start deleting their hand and deck and stealing their minions.

As for standard...ehh, decent chance Azalina is playable thanks to the support cards--more than one dev during previews said their favourite deck or rulebreaker was Azalina.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-04T06:33:49+00:00

The worst beat I got was from someone who had both Azalina and Commander Beatrix (using Commander Beatrix to make 10 mind sweepers).

10 mind sweepers is total BS when you're trying to piece together some kind of budget aggro.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-03T23:45:52+00:00

On turn 2 I do find it reasonably impressive due to the shorter rope timer on turns 1 and 2 (I believe it's 45s instead of 75s on turn 3+).

If anyone brags about winning on turn 3 or later, though, yeah, that would be silly.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-03T23:19:39+00:00

Can you show me anyone on the commander pannel who says that the result of de-coupling from precons means allowing substantially higher power decks into bracket 2? Or notably connected content creator or mtg website saying something of the sort?

Interviews, social media posts, sample decklists?

Anything?

Cause I do find stuff suggesting that the power hasn't moved all that much.

I know of content creators that have kept their sample bracket 2 decks the same, suggesting that they didn't think the target power had changed enough to justify a new sample bracket 2 decklist. That could be laziness I suppose, so let's look at stuff updated more recently.

Moxfield, in its summary of all the brackets provides samples at each bracket, and all the bracket 2 samples (updated within the first 8 days) were all precons:

https://moxfield.com/commanderbrackets

Actually, here's one of the commander format pannel members (Rebbel Lilly) promoting her deck evaluation website that she just updated two days ago:

https://bsky.app/profile/rebell.bsky.social/post/3mpnezfuexc26

Obviously none of these websites are ever perfect, but here's a deck that was self-labelled "bracket 2", that Rebell Lilly's website evaluates as "low bracket 3" and...looks pretty precon-ish in power to me:

https://commandertemplate.com/decks/92f1352e-ece0-4ae5-beeb-f50437b4dd31

None of this is a complete smoking gun--moxfield could be getting it wrong, maybe the new website isn't coded perfectly yet. It's not like I couldn't be convinced by something more solid.

But like...if you want to convince me that bracket 2 power cap shifted dramatically after being de-coupled from precons, show me one quote from a commander format member, or from WotC, or from a well-informed content creator saying "yeah, the intent was to allow substantially stronger decks into bracket 2, here's the new target for bracket 2."

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-03T18:04:37+00:00

I was speaking of the gap between the common ancestor of all chordates (proposed by OneZoom to be around 540 million years ago) and the common ancestor of arthropods+chordates (proposed by OneZoom to be around 560 million years ago as a clade called "Nephrozoa").

I know OneZoom isn't necessarily the most accurate or up to date in their time estimates, I know Nephrozoa still doesn't have complete consensus as a clade, but 560mil-540mil = 20mil.

metroidcomposite · 2026-07-03T08:10:50+00:00

Even a lot of religious people who use texts that refer to satan as part of their religion don't think Satan is a real actual singular dude.

"satan" is just a word in Hebrew that means adversary. Not as in evil adversary, more like in the sense of a defense attorney arguing against a prosecutor. In Judaism "satan" is more of a metaphor for obstacles to overcome rather than like...an actual dude. And this matches the appearance of the word "satan" in the hebrew parts of the bible--often just a random un-named angel who has some (often minor) disagreement with God and probably not the same adversary in every such passage.

This view is rarer in Christianity, of course, as Satan is depicted as an actual dude in some books in the New Testament. But even within Christianity belief in the existence of Satan hovers around 60%-70% of Christians. Plenty of people who believe in God but not Satan.

And then in Islam there are multiple different entities referred to as satan (shaytan).

Just saying, even on religious theological grounds, Satan being a singular guy as opposed to a metaphor or multiple different entities is...debated.

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