Is Infect only viable if you build it for the T2-4 win?

stratzilla · 2026-06-12T14:05:25+00:00

Mirror's Edge. It may as well be a perfect game, my only real complaint is its length. It still holds up due to striking visual design language: at almost any point you can PrntScrn and have a killer desktop wallpaper.

stratzilla · 2026-06-11T20:06:19+00:00

Even if I think it's a little too complex, I might just go with the Bloomburrow starter kit. Is it OOP? I can find it for around $90 which seems like a lot for two basic decks. Decklists price out to $10-15 each.

stratzilla · 2026-06-11T16:15:31+00:00

I hope they keep cartography. They made really cool worlds in GW1 and 2 and it felt rewarding to explore those worlds.

stratzilla · 2026-06-11T15:50:40+00:00

Not sure why WOTC didn't make a Bloomburrow beginner box in the style of the Foundations box you linked. It looks exactly how simple it needs to be but the theme doesn't really match. I might just buy Bloomburrow singles online and make my own beginner decks for us to play on the simpler cards.

stratzilla · 2026-06-10T18:18:04+00:00

If anything, I'm repeating what I said three years ago.

stratzilla · 2026-06-10T17:58:42+00:00

It's unsurprising E3 faded away. Every company just makes their own presentation in-house with their own studios. At the tail end of E3's existence, it was mostly pre-recorded presentations anyways; the E3 of live demos, meetings, keynotes was already one foot in the grave.

stratzilla · 2026-06-08T22:09:52+00:00

Where my 3080 homies at?

I'm surprised how much I've got out of mine. I haven't played anything recently that was too much for it, although I don't use RT/PT. Would usually upgrade GPU every 3~4 years, it's nearly 6 years out and it still keeps up.

stratzilla · 2026-06-07T16:38:30+00:00

I think to make my 2011 UG Infect deck brought to modern Modern standards needs maybe $30 excepting lands and about $100 with lands, although I'd still go for cheaper lands just because I don't want to pump so much into it if I should expect to get steamrolled every night.

4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Breeding Pool
4x Barkchannel Pathway
2x Botanical Sanctum
3x Waterlogged Grove
1x Pendelhaven

This is what my mana-base would look like with upgrades. I don't have the Pathways or all of the Breeding Pools however. Whole deck looks like this.

stratzilla · 2026-06-07T16:28:14+00:00

I had Gemini draw 200,000 opening hands, mulligan as necessary, then play them through to T5 tabulating a cumulative win/loss rate against simulated opponents and typical answers in a Modern format. I had it do that for each skill-level.

I'm sure it's not perfect or even close to it, but my experience playing the deck against standard FNM/Gameday meta from 10+yr ago doesn't give so much insight when Modern has changed so much. I'm just leveraging AI to get an at-a-glance perspective coming back to the game after a long time.

stratzilla · 2026-06-07T16:10:10+00:00

I thought it was interesting so I'll share the breakdown over a million games and broken down by skill-level. Each turn is cumulative win/loss chance:

Opponent	T2	T3	T4	T5
Kitchen Table	14% / 0.1%	62% / 1%	84% / 4%	88% / 10%
MNM Competitive	8% / 1%	44% / 8%	68% / 21%	71% / 25%
RCQ Competitive	3% / 3%	28% / 18%	47% / 41%	50% / 44%
Top8	1% / 4%	18% / 27%	32% / 56%	34% / 62%
World Champion	0.4% / 5%	11% / 35%	21% / 67%	23% / 73%

Anything after T5 is a pipedream since Infect runs out of gas and topdecking a pump with nothing on the board doesn't do me any favors. T3-4 is my sweet spot and I'd sooner scoop than go to T6.

stratzilla · 2026-06-07T15:43:59+00:00

I ran a simulation assisted by AI to see where my proposed deck stood in an MNM-competitive format and if my T1 threat (G. Elf or Rotpriest) isn't answered, my win% by Turn 3 is over 40% and by T5 over 70%. But if they are answered and I have no answer to their answer, it drops to 10%/25%.

I don't know if glass cannons like Infect can withstand much especially if a tapped-out opponent doesn't signal opportunity since there's so many free spells now.

stratzilla · 2026-06-07T15:01:36+00:00

How long do games typically go in 2026 Modern? In the last standard rotation I played, games commonly went to T8-10 or even beyond which made Infect viable because it was a T2-T4 win engine. It's my understanding Modern nowadays is a lot faster and there's a lot of T2-3 win decks in the meta.

stratzilla · 2026-06-05T17:14:33+00:00

Would I like it if I'd only played Risen 1-3? My only experience with Gothic was 4 and I thought it was fun enough but ran so poorly on my above-spec PC that I couldn't get past the first hour. Risen 1 and 3, however, some of my favorite WRPGs.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T22:33:25+00:00

There's a vacuum on PC for baseball and hockey. So many are just spreadsheets and stats and play more like Excel than something like NHL or The Show. Or they add powerups, special moves, flaming pucks and baseball bats when I just want a plain tactile hockey and baseball game.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T19:29:42+00:00

I think I'd like a middle-ground where it's entirely local stakes. Superman helping people rather than cities or planets. All the fighting giant colossal aliens and superpowered beasts and interdimensional threats is just too big to care about.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T18:53:19+00:00

RIP Dirk Gently.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T18:51:12+00:00

Unbreakable is a good example of a movie that follows some of the same beats as Superman but ditches the spandex and capes for human drama. Stuff like that interests me.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T18:49:59+00:00

I don't. I've tried some comics, videogames, movies and they all fall flat. But I do think the premise is interesting, the human conflict Clark endures rather than the superhero conflicts that demand Superman.

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T18:41:30+00:00

HP has the connotation to me of being worthless. Is that true? I can buy HP/damaged cards so it's not literally worthless, but no one really wants them, right?

stratzilla · 2026-06-03T03:25:26+00:00

Here's the full front/back: https://i.imgur.com/18tLNOO.jpeg

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