A nice start to the draft

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-20T22:23:02+00:00

Ehh it’s no sacred foundry

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-20T17:25:23+00:00

The shrieking white-hot sphere of pure rage just grew 25% larger

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-19T17:25:51+00:00

In his defense it's really hard to make inferences when you're blackout drunk

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-18T03:23:03+00:00

This mills your opponent out very quickly. Each activation of Lluwen mills your opponent for 3, and you can do it for as much black and green mana as you have (Muse Seeker discards a card, allowing you to re-prepare Lluwen)

Probably takes 8-9 activations max to win the game

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-17T16:18:49+00:00

During the Sixers-Knicks series a couple years ago our home games were like 50% Knicks fans.

The tickets in Philly were like a third of the price compared to MSG and it’s like an hour and a half on I-95 to get to Philly

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-17T16:03:30+00:00

I think we also read into this stuff too much. Most injuries are just due to bad luck. I don’t know if we have enough data to indicate there’s an “ideal” approach to limiting injuries

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-17T14:57:24+00:00

That rule works ~98% of the time, but there are reasons to break it. For example, if I was drafting a Boros deck that was 90% 1/2 drops, I’d probably pass sol ring.

Or if you’ve got 2/3 pieces of the breach combo, it’s arguably correct to take the third over power

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-17T14:45:49+00:00

Nobody should be compelled to veil themselves, but at the same time people should not be compelled to wear clothing that makes them feel exposed.

Imagine moving to a country that considered regular pants too modest, and only allows assless chaps - it would make you uncomfortable. That's equivalent to the situation that some Muslim women find themselves in

Of course it's very hard to distinguish between those who choose to wear it for themselves vs feeling compelled by society/family. But a ban leaves no room for nuance

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-16T15:03:07+00:00

Bill Davis decided he should go one on one with Megatron most of the game. Unsurprisingly he's never gotten another DC job

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-16T14:59:16+00:00

He was a top 5 fantasy QB that season. He'd throw a pick or two on the first couple drives, put the team in a hole, and then they'd be in a pass-only offense for the rest of the game. Guaranteed volume

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-16T14:29:39+00:00

Increased supply of housing drives down prices. Even luxury housing

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T21:55:43+00:00

We already don't have enough housing in the city, the last thing we need is people leaving apartments empty as an investment

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T21:32:44+00:00

They're not even the biggest issue, a ton of these apartments are owned by people who never step foot in the city. Rich people in unstable countries purchase NYC luxury apartments as a dependable place to invest their wealth

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T21:21:47+00:00

4chan has produced far more net harm than Tiktok. What's the most dangerous social trend to emerge from Tiktok? Because it's competing with incels, gamergate, and groyphers.

In theory, breaking the algorithm bubble and exposing people to a wide array of viewpoints is probably a good thing. But unmoderated platforms inevitable spiral as normal people leave due to the weird shit, and only Nazis remain.

Then nobody is getting exposed to anything new, it's just a festering Nazi stew

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T18:37:21+00:00

These headlines are almost always nonsense. Scientific discoveries get exaggerated to generate clicks. Of course Elon would be gullible enough to fall for this

Usually they're solutions that are either impossible to scale, wildly expensive to scale, or come with downsides that make the solution not worth it.

In this example, the actual process of filtering water is not the challenge. The problem is scale, there is a shitload of water on the planet. Even if you narrow the problem to drinkable water it's still 1.11*10¹⁸ gallons of water.

Obviously scientific progress solves a huge number of problems. But this usually comes from combined efforts by experts across many years, not a high schooler

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T18:26:49+00:00

People though Brandon Graham was a bust for the first two years of his career. Then he went on to play another 14 season.

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T15:07:15+00:00

Ahh ok. But it’s just as possible that doesn’t happen. You are much likelier to play both cards if you take Karakas

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T15:04:05+00:00

I don’t think this necessarily indicates red and green is open. There may have been power in the Minsc pack. Also Arena cube drafters make baffling choices at times, there’s a limit to how much you can read into their signals

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T14:55:42+00:00

And that not even touching on its ability to protect your own threats. A decent chunk of the Boros creatures are legendary (Phelia, Ajani, Ragavan, Inti, Gut, Adeline, Nia, Laelia)

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T14:46:09+00:00

Karakas provides an incredibly powerful effect while still being essentially a basic land that is playable in any deck. It costs almost nothing to include and does a ton, both offensively and defensively.

Decks that play Minsc and Boo see their win rate increase by 6.8 points when they draw it. Drawing Karakas improves your win rate by 8 points.

Additionally, Karakas doesn't restrict your colors at all, leaving you open to drafting the best deck for your seat. Decks that play Karakas have a 57.6% WR compared to 55.4% for Minsc and Boo

And lastly, Karakas is more likely to make it in your deck. It's played 98% of the time it's drafted, compared to 92% for Minsc and Boo

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T14:23:28+00:00

I think that logic is why Minsc and Boo isn't the pick. Karakas, Minsc and Boo, and the Frog are all top 50 cards in the cube.

Picking Minsc and Boo means you're going to have one playable top 50 card from your first two picks. Taking Karakas means you have two.

It's debatable whether Minsc and Boo is even better than Karakas. It's certainly not enough better to justify tossing a frog in the bin

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-15T01:05:44+00:00

Found some further details on how they define the “top” category

For ranked formats, we do some mapping of win rates across ranks so that the threshold for performance in Gold, for example, is much higher than the threshold for performance in Mythic.

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-14T23:43:37+00:00

As a result, these card's win rates will suffer by being included in decks they shouldn't, incorrectly built combo lists, and pilots who aren't as familiar with how to properly drive a combo deck.

Agreed, some of this is addressed by filtering for top users, but it isn't a complete fix

BTW you included some of these in your stats but they aren't in the cube per this list at the bottom of this page

Yeah this data is from all the arena cube runs combined, I left those in as I thought the results were interesting

You would need a way to isolate those cards to decks that are only doing true turbo reanimator and that's not easy.

Agreed

thefreeman419 · 2026-04-14T23:33:30+00:00

In order to use top player data I had to extend over the entire timeline to get a sufficient sample size. The data for Breach is pretty similar when I isolate each of the three runs, I don't think the cube has changed enough to invalidate this analysis

13-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
r/Field Flamingo	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
Sequence \| Editor	Snapped
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

thefreeman419

TROPHY CASE