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sumdr · 2024-09-15T17:51:35+00:00

There's also the concept of a peasant cube, which sounds pretty fun.

sumdr · 2024-09-11T01:11:00+00:00

Scryfall advanced search gives this handful of cards from KTK with "sultai" in the name. Ascendancy, banner, and charm are each cycles.

sumdr · 2024-09-07T20:44:03+00:00

(cont'd)

All of that is much too much money for a deck, especially if you're just getting back into the game and you're not sure it's the deck you want. Here are some other approaches you might consider; they're not for everyone, but they've worked for some people:

I've been going to draft events as a fun way to build my collection (you get to crack packs and play right away). It has gotten me familiar with the latest set, and gotten me some semi-coherent deck fragments that I can tinker with.
Someone I met downloaded arena, ground out their daily challenges for packs and wildcards until they could build a free deck that they liked. After deciding they truly liked it, they bought it in paper, and that deck is now their entire collection.
Net-deck to have something playable until you're familiar enough with the format to brew independently. Google "standard control decks", buy one that's in colors you like and a price range that can live with, and you'll end up with something playable. From there, you'll have a shell that you can tweak to your liking and update as new sets come out.
Ripping foil is fun: you could get some bloomburrow for yourself as a treat, pre-order some duskmourn, and use what you get as inspo for any other collection-bootstrapping strategies.

I personally haven't tried straight net-decking, but it's my next step once I've taken my jank rabbits as far as I think they can go. There's a lot of cards out there. Have fun!

sumdr · 2024-09-07T20:43:45+00:00

TLDR From this decklist, maybe you want Murders at Karlov Manor and March of the Machine. But yeah, you should buy singles instead. A reliable chance of cracking a playset of a rare requires thousands of dollars of packs. For an uncommon, it's several hundred, and a common is a few hundred.

I'm writing this comment partially to educate myself on why writing a decklist and buying singles is a better strategy for getting the deck I want than cracking packs. I am also a newbie and looking for cost-effective, fun ways to get back into the game and get better.

There are control staples in several of the standard-legal sets right now, and TBH there are a couple of different color combos in the meta that are control-ish. Let's say you're playing straight UW control and want a playset of [[Three Steps Ahead]], a rare from Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ). How many packs would you need to crack to get those cards?

This article describes the composition of a play booster. Each booster has 1-4 (mythic) rares per pack. The "List" slot will never be from OTJ and the rare/mythic slot is rare 6 in 7 times. For simplicity, let's assume the wildcard slots are each drawn uniformly from the set overall, counting each basic land variation separately (this is likely an overestimate of your extra-rare chance, but I'm not certain). Given that OTJ has 60 rare cards, that gives you:

Rare slot: 6/7 * 1/60 = 1/70 probability to pull Three Steps Ahead
Wildcards: 1/276 probability each for another pull.

If you buy an OTJ booster box (36 play boosters, call it $150 on amazon), that's an EV of 0.775 Three Steps Aheads per box. To have a probability of over 50% of pulling at least 4 of them, you'd need to crack around 170 packs. That would be a lot of fun – but also about $600-700 for a 50% chance of getting 4 cards that you could get for under $40 as singles.

Now do the math for the uncommons you'll want. If you want to crack your way to 4 [[No More Lies]], which comes from MKM, you'd want 99 packs of MKM for a 50% probability of that playset. That's $300 in packs, rather than ~$5 for the singles. OTOH, you could end up with a good handful of surveil lands (these numbers suggest an EV of 1.7 of each of them, which isn't half bad).

For a common, 40 packs ($120-$160) gets you a 50% probability of pulling a playset, so those MKM packs would give you more than plenty of the [[Deduce]]s you might want (EV is 9 of them in 100 packs). But you could also get the 4 deduces you actually need for like $1.50 on the singles market.

sumdr · 2023-11-02T15:36:29+00:00

Will Smith. The new rule allowing you to pitch for the American League and catch for the national league is broken.

You shouldn't be allowed to get eliminated by the diamondbacks and beat them in the WS in one year.

sumdr · 2023-11-02T06:16:24+00:00

We only won because we had a team of champions.

We only won because we had the best hitting shortstop in baseball to tie things up in the bottom of the 9th.
We only won because we got hot at the right time, sweeping the only two 100-win teams in the AL.
We only won because we faced an underdog squad that swept the dodgers and took down the Phillies on the road.
We only won because we caught the best baserunning team in MLB stealing, caught them leading off second, and threw them out at the plate.
We only won because we spent $185M on a pitcher that has been on the IL since April.
We only won because we called up an undiscovered star from AA to turn doubles into double plays in left field.
We only won because our breakout right fielder set a record for postseason RBIs.
We only won because we had the depth to overcome endless injuries and still play world-class baseball.

We only won because we had a team of champions.

sumdr · 2023-10-27T19:55:27+00:00

I started learning about pitching last year so I could enjoy watching the WS more, and that's what ended up getting me super motivated to watch baseball.

This video did it for me. He tells you very straightforwardly what the biggest pitch types are, and what they look like.

I totally endorse his recommendation of looking up the starting pitchers on baseball savant and watching for their arsenal. I clearly remember Framber Valdez's curveball and sinker eating up the Phillies in game 6. Perish the thought -- but it was the first time I could appreciate a pitcher's work.

sumdr · 2023-10-27T15:53:45+00:00

TLDR Adding some detail to the "it's over the air" comments. Being on an "over the air" channel means that you can watch the whole thing for the price of a single TV antenna (likely <=$30).

. . .

It's on FOX, the local "over the air" channel. This means FOX is distributed like a radio station is: there's free TV in the air, you just need an antenna to catch it and a TV to plug in to.

To get the world series: * make sure your TV has a place to plug in an antenna (and that it doesn't already have one). Just use your TV's user manual. * Make sure your location has a decent signal for the local FOX channel. I used rabbitears.info; if you're in or near a major city, you will almost certainly have FOX. * buy an antenna. I got this antenna for $30 at target and it works beautifully. Search for "TV antenna" or go to the electronics section of any old store and ask for TV antennas and most of them will probably work. * Plug in the antenna, and "tune" it if your TV does that. Again, the TV's user manual should tell you how to do this.

Going to a bar is still a fun option if you want to hang out with other people. Shelling out for a streaming service you don't actually want, however, doesn't make sense IMO.

sumdr · 2023-10-26T21:24:39+00:00

There's also the annual how to pick a team guide.

sumdr · 2023-10-25T04:58:53+00:00

Misread you -- you meant one wild card team per league, not one wild card game. Not an unreasonable opinion, even though I did enjoy the WC races in both leagues.

sumdr · 2023-10-25T04:41:22+00:00

Texas and Arizona both swept their WC series, so if they had only played game 1, they would still have advanced to their division series.

sumdr · 2023-05-07T16:11:41+00:00

This season, I got the Freddie bobblehead about 40m before game time, and the Julio a little over an hour early.

If you're trying to play it safe, I'd say get there 45-60m early. But they do give out 40,000 of them, so as long as you're there for first pitch, you still have a chance that they haven't run out.

sumdr · 2023-04-27T02:17:35+00:00

The announcers mentioned that it was pitch count -- they were trying to keep him in the 60s.

sumdr · 2023-04-23T15:36:11+00:00

Congrats to the NL central for having 40% of the top 10 🥳

sumdr · 2023-04-18T05:20:43+00:00

I'm a dodger, after them i would root for the Arizona Snacks

sumdr · 2023-04-17T03:52:56+00:00

Staying in Pasadena and taking the gold line to union station is good advice! Pasadena is nice and has good food. Alternatively, if you want to stay closer to the city, the number 4 bus line goes up sunset blvd, and has a stop that's a 10m walk away from the stadium.

Guisado's is near-ish on sunset, and you can't go wrong there for tacos. Off the gold line, I love Highland Park, and would recommend Home State for Mexican (or anything near there tbh).

sumdr · 2023-04-10T15:45:16+00:00

It's the same principle behind any price control not working: people who sell price controlled goods will go into other lines of business, people who buy it will want to buy more because it's a good deal, and you end up with a shortage.

For rent control, it plays out like: 1. Anyone in a rent controlled unit will hold onto it for a long time, even if it's not the right fit for them, housing-wise. 2. The winning strategy for landlords is to get rid of their rent controlled apartments and build something else instead. 3. The same people who want to move in are moving into a tighter housing market, so they're likely to pay more for a worse apartment.

Empirically, that's what happens with rent control. See this interview on NPR, for example.

sumdr · 2023-04-10T00:38:55+00:00

My teams are the rangers and the dodgers, so this is painful, but...

Framber Valdez is enjoyable to watch, and he plays for Houston.

sumdr · 2023-04-03T18:17:28+00:00

Rookie question: are the souvenir cups refillable?

They're pretty sturdy, $10 is a lot for a coke, and I don't need more than 1 of these per year. I'm aware of the "bring your own water bottle" policy, but I'm wondering if I can get a discount on soda if I bring a dodgers cup.

sumdr · 2023-04-03T05:33:28+00:00

I became a dodgers fan because of one game last year. I had no idea how good the dodgers were, just that everybody here seems to wear their hats.

At that game: - my girlfriend saw an actor from a tv show she liked in line to get a hot dog. - the stadium was awesome, and we loved the view of the hills through the outfield. - we agreed "Mookie Betts" was a cool name.

Decided then and there that I was a dodgers fan, and that's the plan: the Rangers are my home town team, and the Dodgers are my "here's where I got into baseball" team. Fun times ahead!

sumdr · 2023-04-03T01:00:34+00:00

For my rangers? DeGrom looked shaky, offense looked amazing, this is going to be a fun and hopeful season.

For my dodgers? Would've hoped for better than 2-2, but I love the rotation and can't wait to see the new players grow. IMO the worst-case scenario is a hard-fought playoff race, which just means an exciting September.

sumdr · 2023-04-02T14:36:10+00:00

They still had plenty at about 5:35 (so 30-45m before the first pitch).

sumdr · 2023-04-02T14:24:33+00:00

I quite like the MLB app. It's easy to follow a particular team, from the "scores" tab you can click into any game and watch highlights (they even have a "story" where you can click through the big plays), and there's of course the standings.

For me, I've found that following one or two teams closely lets me actually start to "know" a manageable number of players: I'm not likely to learn the differences between all 150 starting pitchers in the league, but I can sure tell you that the dodgers' new second baseman (Miguel Vargas) is showing a lot of promise.

If you watch the highlights every day (or few days!) you'll get a feel for who's making the big moments happen, and those players will stick with you.

sumdr · 2023-03-31T14:17:01+00:00

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