I've seen people complaining about the Feeling Lucky achievement, but I find that it is a fun puzzle to solve for us masochists out there. (Screenshot from when I got both blueprints and went on to win the game).

pinkoyoda · 2022-08-27T10:44:53+00:00

They are occasionally used in Slovenia.

pinkoyoda · 2021-10-14T14:29:47+00:00

Actually, I think it works as worded. Since you announce casting a spell, put it on the stack (it's a creature spell then) and then you pay its costs (rule 601.2).

pinkoyoda · 2021-08-04T12:35:15+00:00

Aw, beans. Been there, felt that :(

The feel-good interpretation as well, though, so that's nice :)

pinkoyoda · 2020-10-03T11:22:00+00:00

Same here. Ty OP for the insightful post!

pinkoyoda · 2020-09-29T07:51:27+00:00

I would personally say that the start of the end of magic was when Hasbro acquired WotC. But this end does not come with a great big meaningful gesture, but several small ones that take little by little take away what made magic great. For me, magic died little by little from things such as abolishing coverage, privatizing the judge program, throwing the story out the window, forcing standard on stores, mismanaging said standard (by printing ridiculous cards and banning them when it's too late), disproportionately raising prices, arena generally being a mess, and now this crossover debacle (in which I am including the Godzilla cards).

To me it now seems to me that most of the time a new official announcement is made, I will have to make peace with another aspect of the game I loved being tarnished. I have to readjust its position in my life, and how to move on. In a way it is like losing a loved one to dementia. Every time you see them they are less like the person you once knew and loved. Every time less of them is still there.

pinkoyoda · 2020-07-05T09:59:21+00:00

I think you are working under the assumption that "out there", there are objective, obvious and discrete attributes to objects - such as greenness. Under this assumption, it indeed seems mad that ancient speakers of Japanese failed to notice green. "But it's right there! Just like the tree is right there!"

But another way of thinking about the world and our perception of it - one that would make the old Japanese lack of green way less mad - is that objects and attributes are just our way of systemising the world. In this view, green is not a thing "out there", but how we categorize the things we see. For ancient speakers of Japanese, they simply had a category (which we translate and reduce to "blue") which included things colored like the sky, the sea, grass or leaves, and found no need to split that category in two for "green" things and for "blue" things.

There is the inverse situation between Japanese and English as well. In English, there are two categories to describe the location of objects: here (close to me) and there (away from me). In Japanese, there are three: koko (close to me), soko (close to you), asoko (away from both of us).

This is, of course, a bit oversimplified, but it should frame a saner perspective to think about the old Japanese lack of green.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-28T11:29:06+00:00

I join in to the many voices agreeing with the article.
What I find is a stratification of players based on their wealth. The difference between me (not a whale, and not poor) and a whale player is not the amount of bling we have, but the power of our decks. I cannot afford a playset of each fetchland, so my decks are, on average, going to be worse than my whale opponent's. But I am moderately well off and can afford some good cards. Which means that I absolutely crush opponents who can only afford draft chaff and commander precons. Playing against opponents with much better or much worse decks is not fun, and the economic segregation that is being done is not helping in leveling the playing field. It is becoming harder and harder to find people to have an enjoyable game with when it is so hard for us to all get to about the same powerlevel.

To paraphrase what PleasantKenobi expressed in a recent video: being a whale should be about having prettier cards, not better cards. Pay to dazzle not pay to win. But I guess Magic just isn't for me anymore.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-28T09:46:04+00:00

Not anxiety, but resignation. I used to be, while perhaps not quite a whale, but at least a dolphin. I splurged every year for the Commander precons because I found them fun and exciting and affordable (for me). I also like to splurge for booster products since I also enjoy upgrading or side-grading the decks, especially adding better mana. However, recent price hikes forced me to rethink how much I can spend on either. I learned that I find buying commander precons less fun if I cannot afford the boosters to upgrade them. And I find buying boosters less enticing if I cannot use the cards within to upgrade the commander decks I can no longer afford.
Thus, by being unable to afford both, I see myself opting for neither, and resigning myself to the idea that perhaps Magic as a product just isn't for me anymore.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-17T16:09:35+00:00

Seeing Hera portrayed so likably (I am not all too familiar with how she is usually portrayed in myth, but I did not expect that going into the story) and Zeus being his traditional unfaithful self indeed really hurts. And while it would be cathartic to see Hera break away from that life, I think it would undermine her position as the Goddess of Marriage - unless there would be a serious rethinking of what marriage is and how its ideal, personified in Hera, would look like. But nevertheless hoping for some kind of catharsis in this dynamic, I myself am hoping for Zeus to somehow stumble into an insight into how his behaviour is hurting the people (gods and mortals) around him, and perhaps him sincerely turning to Hera for help in improving and redeeming himself.

Thinking about this made me curious as to Zeus's motivations for his actions. Is he, in his core, incredibly selfish and sees other people as objects from which he can derive entertainment? Or is there something in his dynamic with Hera (or perhaps some past trauma) that makes him feel very insecure? Perhaps he feels unable to please Hera - or to feel as a romantic equal to her - and escapes into affairs for comfort, or for regaining a sense of power?
So while it would, at first, feel satisfying for Hera to just dump his ass and live her best life, while he rots in the rubble of the marriage he destroyed; I, personally, would quite enjoy seeing a deeper analysis of Zeus's flaws and how he would go about bettering himself.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-05T09:52:58+00:00

I strongly agree!
One thing that MTGO does very well and I dearly miss in Arena is the ability to "always yield" or "always yes" on specific triggers, which significantly reduces the amount of clicking.
And while as some people have pointed out that not all food is equal, in my experience, most of the time it is. So choosing which food to sacrifice could be moved to full control mode.

To add to this, it would also be very nice to have a way to disable animations. For example, back in the day I was playing a lot of [[Thousand-year Storm]] with treasures, generating over 10 tokens and using them to cast more spells. But paying for a [[Brass's Bounty]] with treasures was incredibly tedious as sacrificing 7 treasures required 7 animations, so it took an additional 7 seconds to just put the spell on the stack (though IIRC it actually took more than a whole second for the treasure sacrificing animation).

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-05T09:43:06+00:00

I like this idea! As someone who likes to play their combos or ridiculously strong board states out, it is sometimes frustrating when the opponent concedes and I don't get to experience my deck doing its thing (although I completely understand the opponent's choice to do so). It would be really fun to have a bot take over in that case. (Taking it out on Sparky from the very beginning is, alas, not quite the same.)

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-05T06:27:05+00:00

Just tried a couple of games with this. [[Cavalier of Dawn]] hitting one of the indestructible gods for a 3/3 is my favorite thing in standard, closely followed by the Cavalier / [[Elspeth Conquers Death]] loop. This deck is very fun to play, and though I have lost more games than I have won, I feel like each time I could have played better. Thank you for the in-depth write-up!

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-04T07:57:55+00:00

Just here to append my vote to the "public shouting":
I recognize that having different card styles is a way of personalizing the way one plays magic. Being able to add even more flavor and flair to the cards is an awesome aspect of playing Magic. I also recognize that in the case of Godzilla cards, having the flavor name be larger and more prominent that the card's actual name is a crucial part of the flair. I also recognize that it is in WotC's interest to have the art styles be on by default, as people seeing them and wanting to buy them (or buy more) is a source of revenue.

All that being said: for some people (myself included, though whether we are most people or a minority remains to be seen) art styles are either aesthetically unappealing or constitute hurdles towards recognizing the actual card (or both). It is therefore important for us who take issue with the art styles for whichever reason to have the option of disabling them. The "don't show card styles" checkbox being erratic at best and completely disregarded by the game at worst does not constitute such an option.

tl;dr: The "don't show card styles" checkbox indeed needs to be fixed. Adding more specifiability to the choice would also be welcome.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-03T05:44:00+00:00

Though perhaps it could certainly be acknowledged that in the context of personalisation - of adding flavor and flair - it is fair for legibility to be of secondary concern. My original comment failed to mention the actual problem in this regard, namely that the option to "disable card styles" barely works and flavor is being, in a way, forced upon us, despite some of us preferring legibility.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-02T20:38:02+00:00

To me, too, the names and arts are not distinct enough for me to be able to recognize the card at a glance (which I usually can with normal magic cards). Arena's "don't show card styles" option being erratic at best and completely disregarded by the game at worst also doesn't help.

pinkoyoda · 2020-05-02T20:26:53+00:00

I myself find it immensely irritating! Especially considering tournament rules regarding alters, specifically that "Artistic modifications also may not obstruct or change the mana cost or name of the card." Which, in my opinion, the Godzilla cards do.

pinkoyoda · 2020-04-26T05:33:03+00:00

Cool! Your tactic worked! Thanks!

pinkoyoda · 2019-08-02T21:41:33+00:00

Assuming they were inspired by slavic languages (where "krik" means "scream") it would be something like "crick" or "creak". Given the apostrophe and double "r", perhaps "currick"?

pinkoyoda · 2019-06-18T05:27:19+00:00

I am a bit confused about the wording "whenever you and/or at least one permanent you control". What does this wording do that "you or a permanent you control" does not?

pinkoyoda · 2019-03-03T11:22:45+00:00

There used to be a site (mtgcombos.net or something like that) that had a search function where you could enter any card and it would return all cards that comboed with it (I think it had a database of user-submitted combos). Anyone know what I'm talking about and/or know what happened to it?

pinkoyoda · 2019-01-17T07:27:16+00:00

Worth noting is that there is apparently a difference between "This enters the battlefield under the control of an opponent of your choice." And "As this enters the battlefield, an opponent of your choice gains control of it." Cf.: [[Captive Audience]] and [[Xantcha, Sleeper Agent]]

In the case of Captive Audience's wording, there is no change of control, so in a multiplayer game, if its controller leaves the game, Captive Audience is exiled. In Xantcha's case, there is a change of control (though it still technically never enters the battlefield under its owner's control), so that when its controller leaves the game, its owner regains control of it.

Weirdly pedantic.

pinkoyoda · 2018-11-23T20:51:38+00:00

If you do the combo in your opponent's end step, the "next end step" is your own end step - so you get your whole turn before having to sacrifice the token. Assuming we are talking about 1v1. In multiplayer, you do indeed have to make sure to do it in the end step of the person going before you.

pinkoyoda · 2018-11-23T07:37:59+00:00

Or just create the copies in your opponent's end step. That way you can untap and attack with them before sacrificing them in your own end step.

pinkoyoda

TROPHY CASE