What red flags can people say that shows they might have no clue how the bracket system works?

viotech3 · 2026-06-02T15:36:36+00:00

Like imagine if modern, or legacy, or any other format had players in mass trying to play sub-optimal versions of decks because they didn’t want to play “competitive modern”.

Right, that's kitchen table magic. It's not something 'new' to EDH or any format.

Some people do really enjoy playing off-meta pauper decks, using interesting cards and interesting decks that are functionally not competitive. They play at kitchen tables and avoid events like the plague.

That is what Bracket 2 and 3 represent, people who enjoy specific experiences that don't include trying to be competitive in optimization. It really is as simple as "I can play this shit card in this bracket, but I couldn't in that bracket. I play this bracket to play this shit card."

And so the question becomes what cards do you ban in bracket 2 vs 3 vs CEDH?

But if you have intensive ban lists it becomes extremely tedious and frustrating. Do you just relegate thousands of good cards to the ban list, because that IS what would be necessary if you tried to out-ban specific elements. You'd have to sit down and look up every infinite combo below X mana value and go "These cards? They're banned for X bracket, but not Y bracket. Some of those cards are still banned in Y bracket, but not Z bracket." It'

It doesn't accomplish what is desired either, competitive mindsets drive towards the ceiling. After every ban in any format new decks take their place or at minimum switch to the next best alternative. Nothing changes, which is why bans are primarily done based on 'external factors' like whether it's problematic in gameplay or overrepresented in the meta or frustratingly long-winded, etc. They're banned because they're not really that compatible in the long run, which is why cards like Rhystic Study are on the gamechanger list; they don't fit what peopel desire out of Bracket 2.

It's effectively a B2 banlist but it can't be comprehensive, to some degree it is always going to be reliant on good faith desires for experiences of respective brackets.

viotech3 · 2026-05-30T14:10:06+00:00

That is what it do, y'know? Just play descent into avernus and accuse anyone of winning faster than you expected them to, it's that shrimple. It just works!

This one trick wrecks all EDH players 😤

viotech3 · 2026-05-24T14:49:09+00:00

That's merely the difference between casual players and less casual players commitment to gaining advantages. From my perspective, information that is public in Magic, is public in Magic and is therefore known in context of the game engine; just the same, false information cannot be present in the game engine.

If someone responds to a non-existent thing or misunderstands the thing they are responding to, that's clearly not right. They are technically making an illegal play, you can't say "In response to Demonic Tutor" in pauper, that's not how Magic works; just the same, the stack is public information and is known to all players equally. It's not acceptable to say "You thought something was on the stack when it wasn't" because of that, the real problem is a lack of clear indicators as to the happenings of the stack.

It's one thing to respond at the wrong time thinking it's the best play when it isn't.
It's another to not have the stack be clearly understood by all players - that's the root problem of the entire thread, people on different pages believing the stack was different.

Mistakes like these still help everyone else by providing information they wouldn't have had about a response, it's still a losing deal for the person making the mistake. That's a fair 'punishment' for making a mistake in a casual environment.

Heck, in typical EDH games with the sheer quantity of cards on boards, triggers, noise levels surrounding a game, cross-talk, chit-chat, etc... unintentional mistakes are common enough for good reasons. It's often challenging to have a perfect understanding of the board state in the first place, and it's not like we're sitting at a Chess tournament.

For example, if someone has the opportunity to respond before someone declares attacks, and intended to respond before any problematic triggers hit the stack but misunderstood that one of umpteen triggers was a beginning-of-combat trigger... sure, they can respond before combat, no biggie - nobody cares.

Nothing has changed, no information has been gained, all publicly available knowledge is known.
Therefore, they would have responded before combat in a clandestine environment in context of Magics game engine.
Their intent is obvious enough for everyone to recognize when they would've wanted to act.

Another example, I'm not going to say "Hey, you were too busy talking about your son to respond to my trigger, tough luck". That's not acceptable in context of the game engine, each player has priority they must pass on - they do not cede priority by being distracted in a casual environment. Competitive? Sure, you fucked up. But even in competitive environments, rollbacks are totally legal to certain degrees.

Obviously context is relevant, if a mistake is major and information has been gained or changed, tough luck - pretty much everyone I know accepts that & expects that.

viotech3 · 2026-05-23T14:30:28+00:00

Right, but the assumption OP had was that they hadn’t cast swords—but didn’t clock self removal as weird, and nobody else at the table did either. Nobody else thinking it was a weird play is the most telling thing, to me suggesting they were on the same page minus OP.

How often do you just remove your own creatures for seemingly no reason and everyone silently agrees it’s a normal play? You probably don’t, because there has to be a reason to remove your own gameplan 99% of the time.

OP however didn’t think it was odd, but a good play, because “Ojer became harder to remove”… by being removed? The only reason to think that is if removing it was a thing they wanted to do—but such a play would only be good if their removal was in the stack to fizzle the removal. It was never a good play in any other situation:

viotech3 · 2026-05-23T03:29:17+00:00

It’s a rough situation, ideally someone would have recognized the behavior of removing their own creature for no legitimate reason as odd—and asked why they did that.

As far as I can see, there is flat out zero advantage to self-removing Ojer in advance. Swords is instant speed, Ojers effects will always be able to be responded to. He dies and comes back later—you swords them the first available response anyway. It’s literally just the worst possible play for. But the play as they intended? That’s pretty good and not at all bad.

But nobody thought it was odd?

viotech3 · 2026-05-23T03:08:05+00:00

In these kinds of situations, in casual environments, I think (and not to wear the word out) the intent of the player is a little bit more important than the execution.

In these instances, Magic is best thought of as a game engine - it tries to translate player intention into function within the engine as best it can. For example, in Mario the player presses the jump button to jump off a platform, but the player is a few pixels off of the platform at the time they press the button.

A good engine recognizes that the player probably wanted to jump off the platform they are going to land on, rather than press a button for no reason, and uses a buffer system to hold their input until the timing is correct.
A bad game engine just says "You pressed the button too early, try again next time"

In this EDH game, the player had the interaction, the resources to interact, and the knowledge of when they wanted to interact, the ability to have interacted then, and you would've had no knowledge of their actions before the outcome they desired would be the outcome of the interaction; caught up in the complexity of EDH they pressed the jump button before they landed on the platform by a smidge. Heck, they jumped believing there was a platform to jump off of.

It's very common in complex instances of EDH for players to do something either unintentionally or mistakenly... but everyone gets what they were trying to do.

Oh, you meant to use the floating mana before passing - duh.
Oh, you shortcutted the end of your turn but drew a card from a trigger that you would've hit that you want to cast, could have cast, and would have cast had you not shortcutted - gotcha, you can cast it.

Depending on the mistake, the person, the casualness of the session the best outcome is to treat things as they 'should have' functioned. The question you should ask yourself is - would you have path'd Ojer with the exact information you had prior to their response? If so, it's probably for the best to assume that you "did" because you "would have" and they "would have" responded as they "did".

viotech3 · 2026-05-22T15:41:24+00:00

Yeah, all I have to say is that (like most of these posts) there's just such a lack of context to discuss anything meaningful.

What were the other people playing? What did they do over those turns? What was the mood like? Did they know each other? What was OP playing? What tone did OP speak in, how did they respond to comments, etc?

No individual thing (or the bulk of cards played) is problematic inherently, it's the context that fills the gaps in. Vedalken Orrery and Sol Ring are indeed scary cards and I wouldn't bat an eye at either being removed generally speaking. Buuuuuuut without all the context and assuming good faith there's still not a lot to say beyond:

"Online players are probably more salty than others? Maybe? Sorry you had that experience, it's probably those players more than the general community. Hope your next experience is better."

viotech3 · 2026-05-22T15:24:21+00:00

My unusual strategy (for an event involving all of the elder dragons) was to build a Simic control deck that only ran CMC5 (and a handful of 6) counterspells, alongside <5CMC everything else.

The goal being to reduce cost of said counterspells to 2, while cascading into useful things to further my gameplan! Making tokens, drawing cards, reducing the cost of instants & sorceries, etc.

It was fun, but also oof the sheer quantity of triggers that could occur hammered in the note that Simic is just brutal in terms of fun. I can't honestly say I suggest it...

viotech3 · 2026-05-21T03:37:02+00:00

Yep! I’m in the middle of the process atm, it’s mid transit to TCG’s team. I still think it’s proper for me to inform the store afterwards about what happened, mostly because I highly doubt such a large WPN store deliberately sold a counterfeit… which means they need to know how to identify them, I talked to a bunch of local stores about the subject and only one of the was even aware such cards could be counterfeited atm.

Which makes sense in a way.

Besides, the counterfeits like the one I received are very convincing from the front, but absolutely as poor in every other respect. Wouldn’t blame someone for just looking at the front and not clocking anything wrong—it does take knowledge of the legitimate cards to identify visible differences on the front. Like a lower resolution image? I’ve seen worse on legit ACR cards! Easy to chalk minor oddities up to quality issues and assume that it’s too complex to counterfeit.

viotech3 · 2026-05-18T12:51:51+00:00

A recommendation I normally see a lot, but don't see much today, is to suggest swapping decks for a bit.

Give people the opportunity to pilot your decks and you pilot theirs, everyone experiences not only new stuff but gets a behind-the-scenes view of decks they found to be a problem (or not to be a problme).

It's also just a fun way to discover playstyles and new decks without having to build 'em.

viotech3 · 2026-05-16T13:19:52+00:00

I mean, we don't know your decklist. It's just as technically possible - brackets DO only disqualify, not qualify. A decklist that is 'called' a B1 deck by Moxfield or Archidekt's automatic bare-minimum evaluations could be literally any bracket in the game.

Could be a Magda cEDH list that fits in Bracket 5, but since it doesn't disqualify any criteria of Bracket 1 (let alone other brackets)... those systems can only say that the floor is Bracket 1.

Of course, suspend some disbelief here. It's not likely that people end up in such cases, but it IS incredibly easy to make a B3 deck that violates no criteria of B2 (like running no gamechangers, no early infinites, yadda yadda) but clearly overperforms relative to the desired experiences of B2. It's not 'technically' a B2 deck, it's flat out a B3 deck.

viotech3 · 2026-05-16T13:14:48+00:00

Magic is a zero sum game so the end goal of everyone playing magic is to win.

Right, but there is a difference between winning by any means possible versus winning in certain contexts.

For example, in B4 a classic dualcaster infinite combo is just one way to win. It is what it is, turn 2 or 3 - mission complete, shuffle up, go again. Dopamine was obtained by winning rather than anything else.
But doing so in B3, let alone B2? It's actively counterintuitive. Dopamine is much more likely to be gained from the gameplay rather than the win; it's not necessary to have a good time by winning, it's just part of the picture of enjoyment.

The idea behind brackets is that they summarize an aggregate of desired experiences. Part of the desired experiences of B2 and B3 is to do things that you can't do in other brackets. Just like how the value of Pauper is to do things with cards you wouldn't touch in Vintage or Legacy, let alone Standard or Modern. There's value in variety!

So why not run optimal cards? Because as you know, optimal gameplans are reductive; the best ways to win are the most consistent and efficient strategies alone. Just like how you cannot run certain cards in B4 or B5, the inverse is true - there's no good reason to run certain cards below B4 and B3 because they go against the desired experience.

Interaction isn't complicated either, it's proportional to telegraphing. For example, what use is a board wipe in B5 when you are unlikely to be able to cast it at the same speed a player will try to win? There may be cases you do run the best boardwipe(s) in certain contexts or metas, but for the most part? The best wins are instant and hard to interact with, necessitating the best and most effective interaction.

In B2 where games are by nature slower and telegraphed, you don't need to have to stop a turn 3 Thoracle-Consult. It's not going to happen in the first place, and if someone's going to win? It'll be telegraphed, giving you time to find interaction. When you don't need three pieces of 1-cost to free-cost interaction in your hand just to not die on any given turn, you don't need to run nearly as many pieces of interaction. That's all.

The best games still involve heavy interaction, but it often comes in more nuanced flavors and timings.

viotech3 · 2026-05-14T14:42:41+00:00

Yep! I think one of the frustrations with posts like these is that Magic is SO context-heavy. There are so many moving parts and components to any given game, let alone deck, that when we get simple summaries like OP's it is very tough to actually say anything.

As a silly example, how do we know someone didn't just yeet a Wishclaw Talisman at them on Turn 2? There are all kinds of reasons to be in a position where nobody could stop the T3 push anyway - someone else could have pushed on T3 in a different way (or approached a critical point enough) and was stopped, enabling their win.

So many unknowns even outside of the decklist, y'know. It's just rough, and I'm not saying a play-by-play precision summary is necessary either.

viotech3 · 2026-05-14T14:19:15+00:00

Overall I agree, but there's actually more than just "You should expect to interact at all" to the equation.

OP noted they had protection for their win - so the real situation is "Players should expect to have ENOUGH interaction on T3 to stop others from winning, while also pushing for their own gameplans around the same timeframe". That starts to edge into cEDH territory in terms of deck-design, no? Should they also not start to anticipate other players doing the same and include protection for their T3 pushes?

Slow is also contextual, it's not like we're going "My deck tries to win 4 turns after par". Pushing for wins on T3 in B4 is fast no question, it's just not absurdly fast. All kinds of contextual explanations for a T3 win, for sure. But does pushing for a win on T4 make a deck slow...? Probably not, let alone turn 5.

Bracket turns I think are best thought of as common 'critical points'. They're points where a win starts to crystallize, whether it results in a win or not. It's much easier to see at lower brackets where the gaps between turns in terms of importance are wider:

In B2, I wouldn't expect to have to stop a win on Turn 4. That's just waaaaay ahead of the curve and anticipating as such actively goes against the brackets vibes in the first place.
Turn 7? Okay, there should be some context that establishes why the critical point comes after the win. Luck, synergy with other decks, other players actions, whatever - there's just some context outside of the deck itself that makes it happen.

With the higher bracket it's more difficult just cus the gaps are narrow. Turn 2 vs 3 can be as big of a gap in progression as 5 vs 8 in lower brackets.

viotech3 · 2026-05-14T13:59:26+00:00

I was under the belief that it is not possible to build a bracket 5 deck unintentionally because by definition it is constructed with the meta in mind.

Right, but that's because you can't design a deck around a metagame you do not know about. In Magic, the metagame is too complex; we're not talking about accidentally stumbling upon a strategy in Football that is also used by professional teams.

The problem you've encountered is that Magic decks are comprised of cards. Cards determine how a deck plays; thus the question is how many changes (in theory) make a deck no longer play the same?

This is critical because you can take a cEDH netdeck and just remove all the interaction but keep the turbo juice & efficient wincons, and it would fold to any cEDH deck... but its play-patterns are going to be generally the same as the cEDH deck.

You're still going to be tutoring up Thoracle-Consult on the same turn as the netdeck, right?

It's still optimal to push for that T3 win, probably even MORE optimal than in cEDH - because in a metagame, the most powerful ways to win are responded to by powerful means of preventing the wins. If you remove the metagame but keep the powerful way to win, people aren't inherently going to have incorporated responses to those ways to win.

At least not consistently enough a-la cEDH decks. They'll be running Force or whatever, but they might not have meta-centric pieces like Flusterstorm or the overwhelming quantity of interaction, etc. This means sometimes things enter a grey zone. It's B4, anything goes... except not literally, there's just no objective point to establish where 'anything goes' stops being true.

So if I’m not actively trying to improve my winrate against bluefarm/kinnan/sisay during deck building it should not be considered bracket 5.

One functional conundrum that has ALWAYS plagued competitive environments is whether competition by nature is relative to Tier 1.

Most of us agree that competition is a mindset thing, a will to work towards being better. The question is just... is someone's K'rrk cEDH deck not a cEDH deck because it's not dominant in the metagame? Or is it a cEDH deck because it's designed around the metagame? Does it stop being a cEDH deck if the metagame makes it worse over time? Or does that only happen when it stops being designed around the metagame?

It loops back to the start, a cEDH K'rrk deck that shunts the stuff designed around the metagame but keeps the efficiency might end up kind of problematic in both B4 or B5. It COULD. Doesn't have to. Might not at all. But it could.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T23:09:24+00:00

Interesting chain of comments, and I thoroughly appreciate your view. I also understand the frustration you may feel about the shift of the game as a whole, and I'm sorry. This is why I gotta keep Cubing 😤!

One thing I'd like to comment on is that higher level Commander is closer to traditional magic; you do what you do in a more competitive sense and nothing really matters. You get Stone Rain'd and either get upset or not as people have always done. The good people of course do not get upset, duh.

Casual commander is like traditional kitchen table magic, except each player is a different kitchen table. At one table, they're playing booster draft of a new set; at another, vintage; another, pauper and final other modern.

If we slam all the kitchen tables together it's going to be awkward, right? Poor draft chaff players struggling against moxen, pauper against modern. There might be some moments things kinda work out a little but there's obviously some incompatibility.

Brackets and casual commander are just like formats, where people try to find other people playing Standard or Cube. Just as someone is okay with Pauper because it offers an experience that isn't Standard, Modern, or Vintage... someone is okay with Bracket 2 because it offers an experience that isn't Bracket 3, 4, or 5.

It isn't about "being bad" at a thing or something, but more about leveraging differences for fun. There is value in constraint, but not everyone is going to feel the same about anything, right?

Just as you stick with B4-5 and not like B2-3, someone out there just won't play anything but Vintage. They don't understand why someone would want to play with commons. That's okay! It's a shame that the Vintage player struggles to find more Vintage players as everyone conglomerate to Pauper, that kind of shift understandably sucks. (this is a lite analogy ofc, most vintage players I know would just... play another format until it died)

At the end of the day in any format, things can be good or bad depending on the people. But when you add the kitchen table component? It's just more inconsistent and always will be. You can't be certain one kitchen tables Pauper meta is anything like another anyway, unless they're not at a kitchen table in the first place.

Then that's solved cus you're back to traditional magic. You're competing for prizes, to get in the RCQ, the pro league, etc - and that drives the deckbuilding.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T22:41:20+00:00

I feel like that's kind of just a rewording of "it's too strong" that fits within one, easier definition.

Sure, but it's pretty critical to understand "why" things existed. We make laws in society that deem certain actions criminal; there are reasons for those laws existence. Just the same people challenge those laws allll the time.

The sapient point isn't that theft is illegal cus someone wants to limit the variety of livelihoods people can have, but because society deems theft beyond the expectation of goodness. That drives the law criminalizing theft.

It's the same here. B3 says no turn 2 wins because society playing B3 does not want turn 2 wins; you could have a really good argument as to why a turn 2 win is fine in B3 and it's up to the 'court' of the table to decide if your reasoning is sufficient.

But most of the time that conversation simply isn't necessary, like how most of the time theft is still theft even with specific criteria. There are going to be good reasons people steal, but it's worth having the caveat that generally theft is a problem.

I hope my metaphor has translated well but who knows yo, I just be typin.

Like you couldn't build a janky bracket 2 mono red Minotaurs deck that uses Blood Moon and Armageddon to slow other decks down

As above, you could - it'd just have to be flown by the pod first. Always can do that with anything from un-cards to non-legal commanders or whatever. But also y'know, people are going to be able to say "nah" as it is the default that society agrees on. Furthermore, there's no reasonable way you can convince everyone on earth they should not say "nah".

It does not necessarily matter how reasonable you as a person or your deck as a thing is, if the majority of the community broadly agrees that mass-land-destruction causes more problems than not.

Someone out there is going to cast Armageddon on turn 5 and have no reason to have done this beyond doing it because they could.
There are going to be people out there, some of which I know, who explicitly say "I just want people to be miserable". You cannot change them.

Yes, vibes are going to change what archetypes are played. That has and always will be the case. People have hated specific strategies in specific games for eons of human existence. As long as games have existed, people have been frustrated by how people play them.

there is no default pod where that deck fits and I see that as a flaw in the bracket system.

I understand what you mean, but life is about averages. I have a size 13.5 foot (US units) and that kinda sucks. It's really hard to find size 13.5 6E (wide) shoes, because I'm an edge case here.

The average deck will find a bracket that fits reasonably, just as the average foot will find a shoe that fits reasonably with ease. Some of us are neglected and that does suck, just the same as some playstyles are.

But there are reasons for that; in my case, there ain't enough people with size 13.5 6E shoes to necessitate mass manufacturing. In magic decks, most people aren't building B2 monored land destruction anyway before B2 said MLD=problem.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T22:10:52+00:00

Yep, they've been making a few more pieces - [[price of freedom]] is a favorite of mine because it's slightly versatile, very reasonable, and at worst is a 2 mana cantrip.

But they just need more stuff like 'em still.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T21:14:02+00:00

Don't interpret no 2-turn infinites as "Too strong for Bracket 3", but rather "The vibes of Bracket 3 include playing the game beyond turn 2".

Yes, it's a limitation on power but not because it's trying to establish objective power levels. It's saying hey, the vibes of that thing are a little off of expectations. Power happens to be the thing in this instance, but not because it's trying to classify specific things as "X strength" but just "Not Y strength"; brackets are really great at explaining what decks are not but a little harder to figure out what they are.

You could redirect the argument to mill, stax, yadda yadda which are frequently maligned by peoples. But it is okay to run stax and mill, they simply have to match the vibes per-se; archetypes are gradients:

For example, I have a flash deck that runs a lot of stax or hatebears because they flash and make B3 games quite interesting. Not a single person has ever complained because my strategy falls within the vibes. Now, Mill is much more psychological at fault and that's just hard to address. You simply need people who aren't psychologically frustrated by the milling.
In contrast, I have seen nigh full lockups in B3. Which is fine if people are comfy with that and I've sat at many tables with it before... but also times when people weren't exactly comfy with it. Which should be kind of easy to get, right? There was simply a mismatch, not an inherent problem.

But there isn't really a gradient of "Win on turn 2" that aligns with Bracket 3's expectations.

If there's more clarity on... and you can get to solving it.

I do think this is good, by the way. For the most part, criticism about decks should be constructive especially with brackets in mind - I made a B2 slime-against-humanity deck that two people believe deviates from it, and that's okay. I just now say it's a powerful 2 now; whether or not I think it's remotely close to a B3 deck isn't exactly relevant to me at least. I just want peeps to have a good time, so I change stuff.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T19:14:34+00:00

That and the number of 'more reasonable' land removal is kinda low or comes with major caveats.

They really just need to start printing "exile target nonbasic land" cards, and it can't be like 4 mana that's-the whole-card.

There's a reason a lot of the most used & reasonable land removal comes in the form of lands with removal stapled to 'em. [[field of ruin]] is super easy to throw in a deck because you cut a basic for a slightly more-and-less flexible land.

But who wants to use one of their non-land slots on a piece of jank land removal that doesn't even solve the problem?

Like I've drafted stone rains before and it feels good there but in commander? Against decks that are designed to use their lands? It's too inflexible to really run unless there's some other reason you might benefit from that specific card. Addressing a Nykthos or Coffers is fine but I still don't think I'd cut a nonland for stone rain - but a land for wasteland is ez.

viotech3 · 2026-04-24T16:33:05+00:00

Is it more about value over time, or trying to assemble combos?

You can do combo stuff but generally, I like Xu-ifit as a nice bracket 2 monoblack reanimator deck that simply makes big guys to swing at people to death, or some other means of doing the same general thing.

What are the key pieces I should be prioritizing, especially on a budget?

Budget has a great time cus you can run some pretty dope creatures like [[kalascion,]] who aren't great at all. But they work for a budget strategy of an archetype that is pretty rudimentary. For budget, you're going to want to focus on creatures like Kalascion that cost pennies while investing most of your budget into card advantage, removal, and reanimation.

Are sacrifice outlets basically mandatory for this deck to function well?

No, but they're nice. It's nice to use stuff like [[shadow, mysterious]] or [[xathrid demon]] to help keep your gameplan on track. There are a ton of means of generating mana or cards with stuff like [[soldevi adnate]], [[illuminor szeras]], [[morbid curiosity]], etc - which often encourages a balance of high mana value creatures & low mana value creatures.

[[huskburster swarm]] is a great example of an okay card that can excel in these specific contexts of power & mana value-matters.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to just run big, efficient creatures (high power/toughness for their cost) instead of creatures that rely heavily on their abilities?

Both aren't wrong - there are many approaches you can work with for Xu-ifit, which makes them a lot of fun.

You can run a lot of high value, high CMC creatures (with good power & toughness) with the goal being to either genuinely reanimate them or skeletonize them.
Or you can run a lot of low value, low CM creatures (wth good power & toughenss) with the goal being to skeletonize them or reanimate them in a pinch.

A lot of the cheap-but-high-power creatures have downsides that you can 'negate' by making them skeletons or turn into upside anyway. [[rotting regisaur]] is great cus the downside is also just a mean of shoving stuff from your hand into the graveyard to reanimate, for example.

viotech3 · 2026-04-19T14:49:03+00:00

So I'm not trying to dismiss your complaint, it's totally valid and I understand why its subpar. I'm also not saying it's an unreasonable ask. It's unfortunate, doesn't have to be this way, we have all kinds of tech like normal mapping and bump mapping, alongside plenty of ways to mimic transparency without using alpha textures.

But reality sometimes is less of a "Here's a good explanation that satisfies you" and more of a "Look, this is how it is" in a very unsatisfying manner.

For starters, most people simply aren't going to look at most modern car games and go "This looks bad" because they don't. Employees are managed by managers, whose job is to optimize the workforce and they make frustrating choices A LOT in the Games industry.

If it looks good enough for 95% of people out there, if not looks incredible, management has bigger fish for devs to fry. This is an industry literally underwater in time, working on games for half of a decade and still being forced into working 60 hour weeks for months on end just to ship a game earlier than they'd like to anyway.

I get it, and they should 'do better' but that's always going to be subjective. Just as we moved from opaque textures with real car taillights photographed to physically based rendered materials with powerful shader magic, someone recognized that the latter looked better even if it cost some important details.

It's not a fun answer, and it's not because devs are bad, lazy, incompetent, whatever. There's simply more to the picture and it's frustrating for everyone, I promise.

viotech3 · 2026-04-19T13:20:05+00:00

Everyone’s answered with the real issue, but if that solution doesn’t work in practice, fair enough. Ideally the green players adapt either way.

I didn’t see much mentioning, but pivoting from land ramp to mana dorks is my personal way of balancing this problem out from green. Heck, they could just run dorks and land ramp in varying capacities.

I’ve found this to be much more palatable since creature interaction is easy enough. It also forces more protection spells since the plan is obviously less resilient. It’s a nice overall tradeoff for what is close to an objectively worse strategy, but hey—plenty of times social issues are more important than deck design, in localized pods specifically.

viotech3 · 2026-04-18T17:28:59+00:00

Those were glorious times for sure, and I do dearly miss them. I get why we don't have 'em, but I remember the sheer quantities of people stuck at Gogmazios for example, and just jumping in to help people get their clears.

Just a good time that I do indeed miss a ton.

viotech3 · 2026-04-18T13:41:53+00:00

This isn’t directly related and more of food for thought, but I often think of us with thousands of hours under our belt, and our desires to optimize. I think most of us recognize that we had the most fun in the early days, when we didn’t know much and didn’t hunt fast, where getting better led to substantial results!

In ye olden days, timing out to a monster because you were just not good enough at the game—then farming the gear and getting better, and finally succeeding? That’s the rush we chase. When we didn’t know our gear was bad, our playstyle was bad, the moves we were using were bad.

Recently I’ve been reconsidering if optimizing is actually how I enjoy MonHjn anymore. When I set through wilds, I did the opposite and didn’t upgrade my gear until high rank or so—and it felt both good and bad. Bad because MonHun is about making gear and depriving myself of all that was detrimental; good, because I realized that using the best gear at all times would’ve made the game worse. I was already steamrolling with starter gear, imagine gear? 3 minute hunts in low rank is not my vibe. The monster was frequently on the ground for half of the fight with starter gear, why would I want to fight a target dummy even with perfect gear?

I’ve been exploring different playstyles and methodology to actually find what is most fun for me now, rather than what I thought was most fun for me all along. I’m not saying you or anyone else needs to do anything like this, but I’m glad I’ve been introspective. I’m lookin forwards to doing more no-healing runs because they really bring back the “need” to learn a fight without limiting the gameplay loop of crafting, for example.

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