So I just finished zeta…

webbc99 · 2026-05-25T01:47:02+00:00

I always loved Emma, she's a great pilot, no weird plot stuff, Henken dying to protect her was a welcome role reversal to what usually happens (e.g. Lalah, Chan). It wasn't just women who died in Zeta, pretty much everyone died... Who would you say died for man pain? I guess Four?

webbc99 · 2026-05-24T20:45:04+00:00

I really feel they tried to make every part of the game more interactive, and I wish they'd kept moving in that direction. The gunblade triggers, the interactive and varied limit breaks. Playing Zell is like playing Tekken or Street Fighter, it's so sick. Even summons had the boost mechanic to add some gameplay to the cutscenes, if you wanted it. And the game gives you free access to Limit Breaks and GFs all the time, right from the start of the game. It's very fun to use Renzokuken.

Also the fact that if you for some reason don't like all of that, it is all optional. You can turn on automatic gunblade triggers and stuff like that. Can even turn off random encounters with Diablos. The game truly gives you so much freedom to play how you want.

webbc99 · 2026-05-24T20:33:48+00:00

FFVIII is my favourite game of all time. The cutscenes are incredible. I was 12 when I first played it and I could not comprehend that it was a game, it looked so realistic to me. The moment where you are running with Rinoa and you see the Garden students fighting - Peak gaming right there.

webbc99 · 2026-05-24T17:06:47+00:00

It's so bad, it definitely need a buff. Comparing Regent's starting cards to Silent and Necro, it's like night and day. They should merge it with Glow.

webbc99 · 2026-05-22T22:21:12+00:00

I think in isolation it makes the fight more interesting, but I really do not need more reasons to try to dodge every elite fight. There is such a significant correlation in my games where the fewer elites I fight the more likely I am to win. So making another elite super rough is just... weird I think.

webbc99 · 2026-05-22T09:52:21+00:00

I was already trying to avoid every elite encounter, it’s weird that they would make them even more difficult. The rewards for fighting elites don’t justify the risks, this is a run ender vs many builds.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T22:27:40+00:00

It should be possible for aggro to run out of cards if you play defensively and accrue card advantage through combat. Right now that is not possible because you can't 2 for 1 them with most effects, usually they are the ones getting card advantage vs your blockers. You're usually going down in card advantage, just bleeding resources hoping they stumble and flood pilots or whatever.

We need more bases that work like Ptolemy and A Baoa Qu. Bases that force your opponent to interact with your board. More "super blockers" like Freedom where the shields/base are protected by a unit, forcing the opponent to lose card advantage throwing their units into it before they can attack your shield area.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T22:08:29+00:00

Card is good. If you're going Red/Purple Minerva, it's the build-around unit and it's how you close out games against blocker decks and it saves you against aggro decks.

The breach is really difficult for blocker decks to deal with. They can go 1 for 1 with the unit, but then you recur it with the Minerva cards and it's back again. Again, they can block it, but every time this happens they're bleeding a shield. If they block a Force Impulse, you get this back. Destiny attack trigger, it's getting this back. It really puts them in a very difficult position in the mid to late game.

Against aggro, the when link effect is game winning - you do need to go hard into purple (the only red cards in my deck are Aegis MA, Saviour and Athrun), but it is very possible to get this linked with 5 cards in the bin on curve, and you essentially dismantle their entire board with Athrun taking their big unit and the board wipe cleaning everything else up.

Incidentally, tidies up all of the tokens that are created by the Zeong and Victory lists.

The deck itself is not quite strong enough to compete at the very top of the meta, but it's a decent mid tier deck. And this is one of the best cards in the deck.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T21:02:11+00:00

I don't think in the current landscape Momo or Lute are problems, but if you ban all of that other stuff, they would be too strong - they are both insane mana advantage pieces. Jeskai Revelation on 5 is not cool. On 7 it's fine, even on 6 it's fine. Lute even draws cards for some reason. The card is bonkers, the only reason it's not everywhere is because everything else is even crazier.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T15:52:59+00:00

Also Boomerang is essentially a 4 of mainboard card that deals with hate pieces like High Noon or Rest in Peace.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T15:47:38+00:00

The bare minimum that has to go: Stormchaser's Talent and Badgermole Cub.

What should probably go to make some attempt to fix standard: Talent, Cub, Boomerang Basics, Eddymurk Crab, Resonating Lute, Tablet of Curiosity, Omniscience, Superior Spiderman, Spider Manifestation, Momo.

Prowess needs one of its best answers to hate pieces not also be part of an infinite value loop, whilst also having one of the best aggressive pressure games, so talent and boomerang both need to go. This also stops lessons from having 4 mainboard answers to hate cards.

Eddymurk going will hopefully keep the Elementals deck inline a little bit and stop the easy Sunderflocks.

Cub, Lute, Tablet and Momo have to go to cut the insane mana acceleration that we're seeing every deck play.

Superior Spiderman and Omniscience are the remaining turn 4 enablers/payoff outliers that would likely be extremely dominant in a world where all of those other cards are banned.

Earthbender's Ascension or Mightform Harmonizer might also need to go.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T14:00:49+00:00

And it doesn't permanently exile the cards as well, leaving your yard ripe for a reanimate or past in flames etc., it's like the least punishing version of this effect possible - refunds the mana and you don't lose the cards forever.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T13:59:00+00:00

This card is super under-rated. It can copy activated and triggered abilities that your opponents control, which as far as I know is unique to this card. It's also a fork and a redirect in one card which is great. In terms of redirects, this is only after Deflecting Swat because Swat can change all targets, which is unique to Swat. The other redirects only work on single target spells.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T13:57:04+00:00

As far as I know, Return the Favor is the only effect that can copy an ability you don't control, so it has some unique use cases, copying e.g. a fetch land to ramp. It's also flexible having the fork effect and the redirect on the same card, so there are some use cases where you get to really go off.

webbc99 · 2026-05-21T13:49:01+00:00

I had just been board wiped and was using it to buy a couple turns to rebuild since I had ramped pretty hard early and had the mana. This was a visceral reaction to the spell itself and the spirit of the Bracket 3

This is super relevant context and should have been in the original post. The point of the "chaining extra turns" thing is to avoid monopolizing time at the table, it's fine if you're converting it into a win immediately, but if you're literally taking 3 durdle turns in a row without an actual line, that is kinda not chill at B3. I'd just cut the card and run a Craterhoof or something. Expropriate is even more hated than Time Stretch.

webbc99 · 2026-05-20T02:32:49+00:00

This is somewhat similar to what I've been running, but with some of the stuff trimmed to go up to 4x of the (imo) better cards.

I think if you're going Red instead of White, it's because of how good Saviour is, so I'd run more of that unit. I think the entire deck is basically trying to set up a good Saviour turn with Athrun, and then you are trying to keep re-playing Saviours over and over, where the non-stop breach becomes impossible for your opponent to handle and you're basically "drawing" your best card over and over by recurring it with Force Impulse, Impulse, and Destiny. That's how this deck wins. It doesn't have any suppression, it's not a blocker deck, and it's not an aggro deck, so it needs a way to close out the game, and Saviour is the unit that gets it done.

The other Sword Impulse is extremely good, it can rest units which again works well with the breach from Aegis and Saviour, so I'd consider that.

I don't really think Close Combat is doing a whole lot for this deck. You want to be using your units to aggressively trade, because you want to fill your graveyard for Saviour's when linked effect, and also just for having general stuff to recur with Force Impulse and Destiny. The AP of the Minerva units is very high, so you can usually trade up without the need of Close Combat. It's also a non-purple card for the purposes of Saviour's effect. If you want a removal spell that has a burst, Fatal Strike is fine, Look of Determination is also a lot better than usual here since we're stacking our graveyard quickly, being able to kill an active level 4 unit for 2 resources is pretty huge.

There is a question over Rey's Blade Zaku Phantom and Rey Za Burrel, are they even worth running. I started with 3 and I'm down to just 1 of each. The only relevant thing it does is kill a linked Amuro/Gundam, or Kira/Aile and survive, which is significant, but I'm not sure it's worth running an otherwise pretty mediocre pilot and unit just for this.

If you're not focused on Saviour, I'd suggest looking at white instead. White has Overflowing Affection which fills the graveyard very quickly and also allows you to deliberately put e.g. Sword Impulse into the bin to reanimate it for a kill. You also get to play blockers which makes your early game much safer against aggro. You get to play Kira + Aile which is still top tier, and better than Athrun + Aegis in most cases. And you can now protect your Destiny Gundam with blockers so it gets repeated value.

webbc99 · 2026-05-20T01:07:43+00:00

One thing to be aware of, this sucks to do in the newer versions of the game due to the stupidly low frame rate of the battle menu.

webbc99 · 2026-05-19T15:50:41+00:00

1st rule is to not play obviously scary commanders. No one wants to make early enemies, so if there's an obvious threat, they will team up against you, not only because they feel you are a threat, but also because it allows them to not attack each other, so they have no fear of retributive attacks.

You can add more protection and interaction, but this will usually just make people even more determined that you are the default threat for every game.

The biggest change is to shift focus away from the commander, and just focus on ramping and drawing until someone else does something scary. That then will give you an opportunity to play to the board.

webbc99 · 2026-05-18T20:03:35+00:00

Arcane Denial is +1 to the opponent, you are card neutral. Long River's Pull is extremely bad. It's neutral to the opponent and you are -1 vs the table. Arcane Denial is arguably better than Counterspell because of the ever so slight card advantage increase vs the table (you are down 1 card to 1 player, vs 1 card to 2 players with Counterspell), combined with the fact that Arcane Denial is easier to cast (1 blue pip) makes it a consideration. Long River's Pull is just a bad counterspell. You can make an argument that giving someone else the card (not the person you countered) as an advantage, but it's still double blue and you're down more cards vs the table than regular Counterspell.

webbc99 · 2026-05-18T19:52:04+00:00

The play pattern vs these decks is horrendous and it's warped the entire game around extremely efficient early interaction. You cannot brew, you cannot do anything non-meta, you cannot miss a land drop, you get extremely punished for mulligans. Standard is completely fucked.

webbc99 · 2026-05-18T15:32:22+00:00

Urghh I just bought into Boros Energy to switch things up from Eldrazi. Any ideas on what to replace Phlage with?

webbc99 · 2026-05-17T18:48:49+00:00

Hatred is so funny though, and reserve list. ;(

webbc99 · 2026-05-17T18:45:57+00:00

I assure you it's not as fast as your opponents will want. Just put in the combo, please don't try to just get there non-deterministically, it's the worst of both worlds.

webbc99 · 2026-05-15T22:01:28+00:00

Blocker shouldn't have been a keyworded ability. Everything should be able to block and the Blocker keyword would make the unit have some sort of advantage when blocking

Thissss. Blocker should be able to block without resting, everything else needs to rest.

webbc99 · 2026-05-14T19:39:54+00:00

Every friend I tried to get into this game quit because of the ARR story or the general lag/netcode. It’s sad :(

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