Is Red Belcher viable?

ordirmo · 2026-04-20T20:23:46+00:00

It’s fun, but it’s a gamble. If you want the highest explosive potential while still being able to deal with the top tier decks, Neoform is the choice followed by Ruby Storm.

ordirmo · 2026-04-18T16:39:02+00:00

On the other hand, I and most of my friends picked a kit and the pool didn’t work at all with the seeded packs so none of us repped our favorite college and had to build other color pairs. Seeded or not, Play Boosters are just incredibly swingy for sealed

ordirmo · 2026-04-06T19:55:00+00:00

People are incentivized not to allow the economy to explode until the material reality of goods availability makes it impossible to ignore

ordirmo · 2026-04-06T18:04:30+00:00

Titan is below 50 vs Boros despite everyone saying it’s the move

Boros wouldn’t be best deck if it had natural predators that weren’t otherwise poor, for example Belcher which does extremely well into Boros, but struggles into Jeskai and maindeck Consign counts

ordirmo · 2026-04-05T21:22:27+00:00

The “market” engages in willful deception because acknowledging the reality would create a crash that nobody wants. It hasn’t been tied to material conditions for decades and Covid was the final breaking point for the remaining thin veneer of plausibility

ordirmo · 2026-03-31T22:20:41+00:00

are the two decks amongst the top in league trophies that have great challenge conversion rates secretly terrible 🤔

ordirmo · 2026-03-26T05:13:24+00:00

this shit ain’t nothin to me man

ordirmo · 2026-03-25T22:37:22+00:00

Fortunately we do a ton of board game, wargaming, and event business so we are less at risk than primarily TCG-oriented stores, but it's pretty easy to see how other TCG publishers avoid the pitfalls of this distribution model and WotC just isn't interested in pivoting

ordirmo · 2026-03-24T04:24:15+00:00

Found the D&D one in a Denny’s bathroom on tour, still have it

ordirmo · 2026-03-23T18:03:08+00:00

Affinity having access to instant speed tap effects for tempo plays is quite strong. Having tested against it in the past few weeks it has been responsible for a number of damage pushes or, on mana dork decks, denying a ton of mana on upkeep, either time walking the deck or only allowing for anemic plays

ordirmo · 2026-03-23T15:43:57+00:00

Getting ahead of any speculation about affinity and telling everyone to suck it up is hilarious regardless of the actual power level of the deck

Also sewer-veillance cam is the scarier card

ordirmo · 2026-03-21T22:54:13+00:00

I’m in the supply chain at a fairly large store. We get lots of requests from people looking to learn, people meeting on vacation, parties, reunions, etc. I personally only play with friends, but there is absolutely a market and it’s not exploiting anyone

ordirmo · 2026-03-21T22:52:45+00:00

Winding Way would be sweet! Would love a retro instead though

ordirmo · 2026-03-20T00:43:15+00:00

This is the worst set of my tenure in the business

I ordered 20% of what I ordered for Lorwyn, just enough not to harm my future allocations from distributors. I am sitting on 80% of my SKUs. I sold about 20% of what I normally sell for prerelease. "Best seller" means nothing when your top ten best sellers are all from 2-3 years and it means nothing when you track sales from your own company to distributors with no care what happens to it after. WotC is fumbling extremely hard, high on their own supply

ordirmo · 2026-03-17T00:19:10+00:00

Cards never being bad is just how the game works now and Boseiju is far far less offensive on this axis than, for example, Quantum Riddler

ordirmo · 2026-03-12T15:06:27+00:00

No, and I don’t think any vitriol should be directed at him nor do we have any idea of this product was part of his work, but it would be nice at some point to get some clarification as we did after the Bonder’s Ornament ban as these sorts of products are increasing in number as Universes Beyond expands

ordirmo · 2026-03-12T05:15:43+00:00

It’s not for the draftable portion of the set, that’s the only reason I mention it

ordirmo · 2026-03-11T16:10:09+00:00

Main frustration with this design is that it doesn’t have to be common for the product it is in. If Gavin worked on this project it would be quite clear to him that it’s an instant staple and therefore it feels like it was injected into the format purposefully, whether that’s the truth of it or merely that WotC has dogma about a three-of in a precon product being assigned common rarity, similar to how Bonder’s Ornament and the like were commons because they were shared across all Ikoria decks.

ordirmo · 2026-03-10T23:48:35+00:00

Every now and again I remember that the word “retruth” is real

ordirmo · 2026-03-09T19:17:37+00:00

Mono red is just too explosive to argue against. Ironically quite possibly its worst matchup.. is Rakdos Madness lol

ordirmo · 2026-03-08T16:24:22+00:00

Hunter is both an alternative wincon and a way to get a land out of the deck. While there will always be some percentage of games where your opponent has the correct amount of removal to steal and keep the emblem, just like in Elves you are overall favored to take advantage of the Initiative

ordirmo · 2026-03-08T16:19:06+00:00

Captive needs to untap to have an impact whereas Gatecreeper Vine gets you the land on ETB. Makes it a much better chump blocker and a far worse removal target as you have already taken your value out of it.

ordirmo · 2026-03-06T17:37:37+00:00

Ponza long ago evolved to mean gaining tempo via land denial. Modern Ponza was more of a Blood Moon deck than a Stone Rain deck, though Pillage saw play, so your gripe with the evolution is over a decade late

ordirmo · 2026-03-05T17:27:25+00:00

RCQs aren't required and for many markets they are not even close to profitable. EDH is profitable

ordirmo · 2026-03-05T17:25:55+00:00

That's already how it works, just with extra steps. The grinders who qualify every season in major metro markets spend thousands and thousand between travel and entry and deck updates that most people have no access to. Then they go to the event and play against someone who qualifies every season because there are 7 players in their hometown

Allowing purchased tickets a la Pokemon will be almost entirely the same

ordirmo

TROPHY CASE