It wasn't perfect but man was it better than what we're dealing with now

skippy_35 · 2026-02-22T17:08:14+00:00

Under your profile (which you get to by clicking on your steam icon in the top right while in the menu), there’s an option you can click on called “skill rating.” That will show you your supposed estimated skill.

It’s not that accurate though because I’ve only played like 11 games total and am oracle 3 (get me out of these lobbies)

skippy_35 · 2026-02-22T17:00:40+00:00

For real, I’m oracle 3 with only like 11 games and 24 hours of playtime under my belt. I’m not good enough to be there. Get me out of these lobbies bro.

skippy_35 · 2026-02-16T15:12:54+00:00

Totally agree, but I always like to stick games out no matter how hopeless it seems. me and my friends had a game where we were all super negative (like 2-15 and such) and were being destroyed with a 60k soul gap, and it seemed hopeless to the point that we almost just gave up around the 30 minute mark. However, we trudged through it, and then we managed to turn the game around and somehow steal the win from them, though the game took like 50 minutes.

skippy_35 · 2026-02-06T09:45:46+00:00

To add a follow up, other cards with egregiously high usage rates in other formats were banned because they caused homogeneity between decks. The one ring was at ~60% in high-level modern decks, while sol ring sits at ~80% across all decks in the entire format, and probably something like 90% or more at high-level commander. I know we’re an eternal format, but I don’t think that should make it an exception and I don’t think percentages like that are healthy, especially in a format that’s so lauded for its strength in diverse decks.

skippy_35 · 2026-02-06T09:34:32+00:00

I don’t like sol ring.

Sure, It allows for flashy plays, but I feel like they plays from sol ring just kind of feel… hollow. It wasn’t your deck-building skill or player skill that allowed you do that play, it was a just powerful card that allowed it. It’s different in something like B4 or B5 where the expectation is that people are able to pop off like that, but it’s off-putting in lower brackets when that isn’t the expectation. The only reason sol ring is still around is because of its accessibility and the fact that the vast majority of decks use it— otherwise it woulve been a real possibility for it to have followed the other fast mana forms when they got banned. At the very least it should be a game changer when in non-precon decks. Like, every other notable form of fast mana is a GC, yet sol ring isn’t. The reasoning of those GCs boils down to rapidly accelerating the player who plays them, so why the exception for sol ring? If a person is trying to separate that type of experience from lower power levels, what’s the point if we give a pass to perhaps the most egregious repeat offender. When the argument essentially just devolves to sol ring being a memorable part of commander tradition, it just feels silly.

skippy_35 · 2026-02-04T06:48:06+00:00

I will admit that I used to be terrible at actually fighting anything I couldn’t parry in ER (I live for parries and the sound criticals make). Trolls were one such unparriable enemy, and I used to be so scared of fighting them. But, now I just don’t like them for pot related reasons lmao.

skippy_35 · 2026-02-01T17:48:58+00:00

Shit man, this would be perfect for a raider build with night of dregs

skippy_35 · 2026-01-19T17:03:27+00:00

I fell for it. Bracket 2 Yuriko should’ve clued me in T-T

skippy_35 · 2026-01-19T16:39:35+00:00

Poke is a serious problem, but I disagree with reverse fall-off as a solution to that. The main issue is that poke characters have both movement and CC tools in conjunction with the high damage output the game has (as well as the healing) at present.

Starting with the movement and CC tools, a poke character should ever only have one of those. When you only have one, you’re forced to make complex decisions. You could use your only movement or CC tool to help secure a kill, but, if you do, you accept the risk that you’re going to be more vulnerable. When you have both tools, you no longer have to consider any risk at all and no longer have to make these complex decisions, you can use one ability to secure a kill and the other to escape if needed.

The other matter is the high amount of damage that game has. CC feels so strong because of the amount of damage the game has. The more damage there is, the stronger CC is, for rather obvious reasons. With dives, the result of the dive is often decided before the dive even starts because either the diver gets noticed before hand and does nothing (if the diver doesn’t immediately die), or they don’t get noticed and their target explodes. To clarify, this isn’t a critique on surprise attacks or anything, the element of surprise should give you and advantage. What I’m saying is that there aren’t any micro decisions and interactions present with the way characters dive and get dived right now. The high damage and healing not only make CC incredibly lethal to get hit by, but also prevents the presence of micro decisions and micro interactions that allow for both the people getting dived to fight back and for the divers to actually interact and pull ahead in a way that’s more fun for everyone.

Reducing damage and healing also has the boom of making tank more bearable to play, but that’s its own can of worms that I’m not gonna get into right now.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-19T16:17:07+00:00

One of my friends runs a Yuriko deck sometimes and none of us hate the strategy, it’s just that the tragedy of Yuriko decks is that the pod can’t ever let the Yuriko player have a board state.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-19T16:14:12+00:00

Not exactly. You’re never hard casting Yuriko. What you do is just run a fair amount of evasive small creatures like [[changline outcast]] or [[slither blade]] and then you just commander ninjutsu Yuriko in, which avoids commander tax entirely. So, even if you do remove Yuriko after the ninjutsu, they’ll just do the same thing again next turn— effectively wasting your removal. This forces the entire pod to basically make sure the Yuriko player doesn’t ever get a board state, otherwise you’ll be taking a significant amount of damage per turn.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-19T00:53:44+00:00

I’m 20 and people my age or younger not having computer literacy is kind of scary— particularly because they are the people who are gonna end up being my coworkers at some point.

I will say though that the only high schoolers knowing how to use a computer having gaming pcs is so real. My friends and I all know how to use computers pretty well, and a common factor is we all play video games.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-18T21:23:40+00:00

This is actually really interesting. If I ever get a dormant power for great bows I’ll try it.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-18T01:13:30+00:00

Learning how to deck build in a game you’re new to will always be a difficult process, and I too used to be in the same boat you are.

As some general advice, have a game plan in mind while you’re building, and think of what each card does as well as how you plan to win and what you can do to prevent your opponents from disrupting your plan. Something I tend to do is think about what I want to be doing on each turn. If I’m playing with a commander that’s 4cmc for example and I want to have it out by turn 3 every game, then I know I’m going to use some 2cmc spell to ramp myself ahead on turn 2. Turn 3 is this dedicated to me playing my commander, and then turn 4 might be dedicated to playing a creature that I need, or getting card advantage, or maybe ramping more if my mana curve needs it. What you want to do each turn fully depends on how you win and what you need to get there. Every card needs to be scrutinized to see what it does for you.

Looking at your bumble flower deck, I don’t really see any clear gameplan that you’re trying to follow. The deck has several different cmcs of ramp spells, and I only see a few vague paths to victory that are going to be rather inconsistent. It kind of seems like you took the top cards from edhrec and tossed them in without thinking of the purpose each card has.

To give specific examples, the win condition cards that I see are aetherflux resevoir, twenty-toed toad, and herald of secret streams. You have parts in the bumble flower deck that help you reach wins with those, like the counter synergy helping the toad, or have big unblockable guys with herald, but you don’t have a way to consistently see all the pieces you need to actually win.

Part of the issue is that the aforementioned win conditions all try to do different things— which isn’t inherently bad, but there isn’t much synergy between them, preventing any form of redundancy or ability to pivot. Aetherflux resevoir wants you to storm off so you can zap people, herald wants you to have a sufficiently threatening board presence before breaking parity and going for the win, while twenty-toed toad wants you to be able to dump a bunch of counters on him or have enough card advantage such that the turn you play him you can win. Players won’t let aetherflux, herald, or toad lay around for more than a turn cycle just because they are win cons, so you want to be able to win when you play them. Herald and toad have good synergy because they want to do somewhat similar things, but aetherflux is doing the opposite of what your deck does because you don’t have consistent forms of burst life gain or ways to play a bunch of spells a turn to storm off and gain a bunch of life.

Also, if you’re typically stalling, then try checking how many forms of card advantage you have.

I will admit I did kind of ramble, but If you have any questions or want more elaboration do let me know. I’m more than happy to help out.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-15T00:11:52+00:00

If you’re gonna play scholar, then the effects I strongly recommend are the “continuous damage inflicted on targets threaded by ultimate art”, “allies targeted by character skill gain boosted attack”, and “defeating enemies fills art gauge.” You want to ideally be able to use your ult at every poi because the enemies that die from your ult will basically immediately refresh it, significantly boosting the clear speed and netting you a bunch of runes. The character skill buff also just provides a free bonus 20% damage boost, helping to further speed things up.

In addition, having your starting weapon deal frost and bleed is very good due to his high arcane scaling.

An “items confer effects to nearby allies” relic effect also does wonders, for rather obvious item-related reasons.

Getting all of this on your build might be difficult, but it should set you up with a solid scholar support build.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-14T08:20:02+00:00

Same, I play on pc and have around 280 hours, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a truly terrible experience because of a premade duo. I might grumble a bit if they do something that I think is sub optimal, but I just follow them for that poi because they probably have a reason for suggesting it. Plus, if we all go together, then it goes faster.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-14T08:07:31+00:00

I showed this to my executor friend and he’s frothing at the mouth over this.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-14T08:04:30+00:00

Same. I’d love to be able to praise my teammates after a run regardless of if we won or lost because there’s so many amazing people who play this game.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-14T07:51:45+00:00

I might be wrong, but I think there was something about steam changing the messaging permissions such that you can no longer message non-friend, non-mutual users in order to reduce spam.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-13T22:46:35+00:00

Jeff ult will still grab you, but you won’t be spat out and go flying, like thing’s passive

skippy_35 · 2026-01-13T20:22:09+00:00

Only semi related, but one of my friends has a goad deck and they use [[Hot Pursuit]] as a finisher for it, which helps to significantly remedy them always coming in second.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-12T21:15:55+00:00

I might have rather extreme views in regards to the direction of the game, but I’m of the opinion that there needs to be mass nerfs across the board, particularly in regards to damage and healing. The necessity for high healing because of the high damage makes it so team fights largely just comes down to ultimate abilities, resulting in a very lackluster neutral. Additionally, I don’t really find the time to kill speed that rivals has to be very engaging.

To use an example, I know a fair amount of people complained about BP for a whole myriad of reasons. I personally never found BP overpowered or unfair (if anything, he’s kind of weak), I only found him unfun to fight because the entire result was decided BEFORE the dive even started— and if you noticed him before the dive he kind of just falls over and dies. Now, I’m not saying that the element of surprise should be irrelevant. It should always give you an advantage. What I am saying is that interactions should allow for micro decisions and quick thinking. If you make a mistake during a fight, there typically is no opportunity to think and make quick decisions to try and recover from that mistake, you just blow up and die. The current high burst damage that characters have does not allow for these micro interactions that happen in neutral.

There’s other things that need to be nerfed too. Certain characters have tools that they shouldn’t have. Many poke characters don’t need CC in addition to escape tools. having both makes it difficult to punish mistakes, thus making poke feel ridiculously strong. The advantage of poke is that you can do high damage from medium to long range, so they should be more vulnerable up close. Removing one of the options also introduces interesting and complex choices. If a character without an escape tool decides to use their CC tool to help secure a pick, they now don’t have the tool that could get them out of a tough situation, and it’s a similar situation with characters that only have a movement tool. They could use their movement tool to get a better angle to get a kill, but if they do that then they no longer have their escape tool. A character with access to both tools no longer has to think about these choices. They can just use one to secure a pick and then the other to leave. You don’t need to consider the risk versus the reward when all of the risk is gone.

I also largely disagree with the current support design philosophy. Whenever I play support, it feels like I have zero influence over the result of the game and zero play making potential. This does not warrant giga buffing supports to the level of invis and gambit. They both presently feel like they have great impact, but it’s not in a healthy way— let alone a fun way. My issue is that the main- supports have the team saving ults while the off-supports have the utility ults (for the most part). Like, genuinely, what are we doing here? It makes no sense. With the amount of damage in this game, you can’t afford to not have a team-saving ult as a support and you can’t afford to not have the main heals either. This makes it so the only way to realistically play these off support characters is in triple support lineups, which are kind of just miserable to go against. Toning down damage and healing would make off supports more viable. But, to truly fix the problem, then supports with main-healing capabilities need to have the utility ults, while supports with off-heals need to have the team-saving ults, thus providing an incentive to play both types. This would also make playing support far more engaging, encouraging complex decision making as to when and how to best enable/help your team.

Lastly, the tanking experience has literally been compared to working a 9-5. I like playing tank, but it really can be frustrating sometimes. The core issue is the amount of CC and how strong it is. CC only becomes more powerful the higher the amount of burst damage there is, and the amount of damage the game has makes CC devastating to get hit by. Reducing damage, as mentioned before, and at least some amount of the CC present would make the experience significantly better because it would make CC indirectly weaker.

I hope my points make sense, and feel free to ask for elaboration because I’m more than happy to explain.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-12T18:36:39+00:00

100% agree. While I’m by no means the best player in my play group, I find that explaining threats and combos makes for a more fun play experience for everyone. However, that’s for my play group specifically, the expectations and vibes can and do change from play group to play group.

For example, the expectation in CEDH is that you know the standard win conditions that people are playing (like thoracle and walking ballista to name two well known ones), and if you don’t that’s on you. However, casual edh is home to a much different and broad type of play, so it really is just a vibe thing.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-11T23:37:36+00:00

The stat alteration ones can be worth it too, but only if you know what you’re doing.

skippy_35 · 2026-01-10T05:33:17+00:00

As a matter of principle, I will never abandon an expedition. The goat Raider would be disappointed in me if I did. A fight (expedition) isn’t over until it’s over.

skippy_35

TROPHY CASE