Lurker > trdl23

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TopicHonkai Star Rail Topic 9: Oni May Cry
trdl23
03/30/24 9:15:02 PM
#109
Definitely need cleanses.

Also, this gambling man has just become my favorite character

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/29/24 12:29:53 PM
#201
ExThaNemesis posted...
Not only is she Grade A fetish fuel, but Kiara is one of the most terrifying villains I've ever come up against.
Right?

Me before SERAPH: "haha horny nun"

Me after SERAPH:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/646f21ca.jpg

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TopicHonkai Star Rail Topic 9: Oni May Cry
trdl23
03/29/24 12:27:19 PM
#89
Will Gallagher also be on Aventurine's banner?

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/25/24 1:19:22 PM
#150
Melt lives rent-free in my head so badly that I incorporated a fae expy of her into my D&D campaign

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TopicFill in the Blank 236: Hit ___
trdl23
03/25/24 12:58:24 AM
#20
Man

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/24/24 1:17:01 PM
#140
ExThaNemesis posted...
Fair enough!

So I just finished the Dantes story part, and saw the last node there, thinking it would be a simple wrap up quest.

No. It was fighting all 7 of the fuckin Lords of the judgment tower again. It took me 52 turns and the better part of 45 minutes SMMHHHHH.

Got great rewards for it though I suppose. All those tickets will come in handy here in a few weeks too I imagine.
Yeah, that was the Challenge Quest equivalent

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
03/24/24 12:45:47 AM
#133
Up one more time

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
03/19/24 4:20:19 PM
#132
Obviously motivation has been low lately, depression's a bitch

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/19/24 2:52:33 PM
#96
Moriarty is a truly based lad

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/18/24 6:10:46 PM
#78
TheArkOfTurus posted...
How far away is the Morgan/Arjuna/Musashi lucky bag? I'm very tempted to just go for Morgan right away (especially since I like her a lot more than the other two,) but if that isn't far away I might just try with that instead.

(Of course, I don't have nearly enough to pity her, but testing my strangely amazing luck hasn't let me down yet (and I'm sure I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.))
GSSRs (Lucky Bags) happen at Anniversary in early July and at New Year

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TopicDoes anyone here like Undertake?
trdl23
03/18/24 5:33:26 PM
#46
Undertale remains my favorite game ever made, but if you end up bouncing off it I completely understand

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/18/24 2:26:56 PM
#74
I also recommend skipping Agartha until you have nothing else to do. The story's quality is offensively bad and there are no unique drops from the chapter.

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/18/24 11:55:12 AM
#68
Shinjuku is a blast. Enjoy!

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/16/24 10:28:57 PM
#62
KanzarisKelshen posted...
Fun fact: this was originally a bug. They fixed it and the fanbase complained so extremely loudly that they readded the bug back in SPECIFICALLY for King Hassan just so he could get the swaggiest possible finish for his NP.
That was originally a bug? I had no idea. It's always been the coolest thing for him!

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/14/24 3:24:49 PM
#50
ExThaNemesis posted...
IDK if I'm overpowered or not, but Baobahn Sith and Herc just made mince-meat of all the final battles. Adding King Hassan to the team helped my cut down those Lahmus like they were NOTHING.
Babylonia is a step down in difficulty from Camelot, so don't worry you're fine.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
03/14/24 3:21:55 PM
#127
IfGodCouldDie posted...
The back of the card
90/100

It's a beautiful design. Everything you need to know about the philosophy of the game is there; it looks like a tome, the centering of the color wheel... it is funny to see Deckmaster remain when the concept was dumped over two decades ago. Of course, the advent of double-faced cards means that plenty of cards don't even have the back now!

Xtlm posted...
The pink back of the card
38/100

I'm very glad it didn't come to pass. It's just so garish.

For those who aren't aware, Garfield originally planned on each Magic expansion to have its own card back, starting with this monstrosity for Arabian Nights:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/39b39c49.jpg

Yikes.

This, of course, would have meant that we couldn't mix and match cards from different sets and pretty much destroyed any chance of Magic becoming the behemoth it now is.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
03/11/24 1:47:59 AM
#124
That was a week ago huh

Whoops

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/09/24 2:48:33 PM
#31
Quetz is fantastic. I used my ticket on her too.

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TopicSo I started Fate/Grand Order... Pt. 2 - Babylonia and beyond
trdl23
03/08/24 4:32:31 PM
#21
Casgil is unfathomably based. And so is Siduri.

Note how Siduri is the ONLY person he will never, ever insult. He'll complain at her sometimes but never anything personal.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
03/03/24 2:10:32 PM
#122
Bump

Will get back on this tomorrow

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/28/24 11:31:07 AM
#120
It's my birthday, so I'll get back on this tomorrow

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/27/24 12:26:19 PM
#118
No

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TopicHonkai Star Rail Topic 8: Welcome to Penacony
trdl23
02/26/24 4:48:30 PM
#321
Wheres a good place for me to understand the mechanical intricacies? Right now I am plodding along with my team but feel like I could be doing way more

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TopicHonkai Star Rail Topic 8: Welcome to Penacony
trdl23
02/26/24 11:54:50 AM
#318
Tag

Just started two weeks ago as my girlfriend got me in, just made it to Penacony last night. Loving it so far even if the Luofu writing was disjointed.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/24/24 1:47:54 PM
#111
TeamRocketElite posted...
Do you know what a typical penalty would be if the judge is competent and the player is caught lying?
In Magic? They'd get their ass DQ'd on the spot. I hope it's the same in yugioh

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/24/24 1:39:49 PM
#109
NFUN posted...
Mind Goblin
What?/100

PeaceFrog posted...
Cube drafts
100/100

THE best way to play Magic. Limited is the best thing about Magic, and I don't understand why it's the only card game to push it as a core method of play. A custom Limited format where you can shape the experience to what you desire? Sign me the hell up!

I have a powerless vintage cube that I play with my friends every so often. It's currently 100% real, but I'm in a bit of a tight money spot, so I'm selling the pricey stuff from it soon. It makes for a wonderful experience that's different every time while giving my friends a chance to do some crazy powerful stuff. Here's the link if you want to check it out: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/trdlcube

Building a cube takes time and experimentation, especially if you are trying to make it have a specific gimmick like a block-cube. Still, if you're a dedicated drafter, give it a try, or at least try other people's ideas. I really hope I can go to Cube Con this year.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/24/24 1:30:53 PM
#108
Lopen posted...
Akroma Angel of Wrath (include Angel of Fury/lore stuff here too don't mean just the one card)
82/100

No rest. No mercy. No matter what.

One would be forgiven for wondering why I love Akroma so much when it has a keyword soup long before Questing Beast was even a concept. First off... she's eight mana with three white pips. If you cast her, you earned those keywords.

The story of Onslaught block is one of the low points in Magic lore, best described as "yo what the fuck." Akroma's writing isn't very good (but is still among the best of the era, somehow). However, the concept is amazing. An illusionist wizard, Ixidor, who loses his wife in a gladiatorial battle to an abomination is left marooned in a desert afterward, and the bad juju artifact of the land, the Mirari, decides its next monkey-paw wish will give the dude the ability to create reality and not just illusons. The very first thing Ixidor does? Give up his arm to reimagine his beloved wife as an alabaster angel and tell her to do anything he can to avenge the real one. Somewhere, Edward Elric is coping and seething.

Months and months of holy war later... well, then I'd have to talk about the Scourge novel. I won't because even thinking about it would drop my IQ. Still, the concept and artistic execution behind Akroma kick ass. Magic has the best angelic art of any fantasy medium, and even compared to that, Akroma is built different.

With so many legendary creatures getting spewed out every year to feed the Commander meat grinder, it saddens me that I doubt any of them will become icons on the level of Akroma. I don't think we'll be seeing "Alquist Proft's Memorial" granting your creatures the ability to crack clues to Sphinx's Rev. Akroma broke ground in design and backed it up with her aesthetic and conceptual execution, even if her actual author sucked, and she deserves the acclaim all these years later.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/24/24 1:03:07 PM
#106
At least I got kind of internet famous when this video came out of me beating someone with boomer cards and got over 340K views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbCeo5Pfv5U

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/24/24 1:01:50 PM
#105
Kenri posted...
Legends (the set)
82/100

I don't know if Legends has aged well or poorly for most people. So many of the titular Legends are wack in design, in mana cost, and color identity. As the very first set after Revised, there still wasn't much knowledge on card design, and it showed. You could look at two cards with the same mana cost and rarity with bewilderment. For some reason, Albert fuckin Einstein was on a white enchantment.

For me though? It's aged so well. Look how many kickass, iconic cards came from Legends. The Elder Dragons, who would be part of Magic lore for decades to come. Tetsuo Umezawa, the building block from which all of OG Kamigawa's story came (Toshiro is Tetsuo's distant ancestor). Famous enchantments like Moat and The Abyss still used to denote modern cards. Some of the jank was fun jank, too -- I loved playing Hazezon Tamar in EDH and abusing the fact that I don't get the tokens immediately. The whole set is packed full of wild, cool designs that just wouldn't be possible now.

We won't get another Legends, and that's probably a good thing. I'm so glad we got one, though. One was enough.

Anagram posted...
Yu Gi Oh TCG
Takahashi did explicitly base Duel Monsters on Magic, so this gets a pass.

Anyway, 14/100

I jammed silly games of Magic with my buddies in boy scouts, but yugioh is where early-teen Trdl cut his teeth competitively. Early yugioh was a blast: There was a beautiful flow and simplicity to the gameplay, there was room for brewing and interaction, and combat actually mattered. Young me didn't have the vocabulary for that, though; I was just glad I couldn't get mana screwed. (Yes I appreciate the irony in me saying this after claiming the land system is OK)

That game is not modern yugioh.

Master Duel did encourage me to try it out, and every meme you've heard is probably accurate. The game is slammed full of force-fed "archetypes" that leaves precious little room to breathe. Games regularly end with one player only getting two turns max. Every card is a tutor for another card. Turns take longer than Zero combos in MvC3 and have 5% of the skill expression.

Say what you will about the state of Magic, but aberrations like Dredge aside, Magic still plays by its fundamental rules. The fundamental rules of Yugioh are irrelevant. "Special" summons aren't special if everyone does 6 a turn. The fact that you can "destroy" cards from hand or deck, which is different from discarding, which is different from "sending," just so you can get distinct triggers? Atrocious design to get around Konami's own stupid errors.

Worse than the game is yugioh culture. I have never seen as much theft and violence as when yugioh cards are involved, and I can't tell you why. Konami's judge program is a joke (and outright offensive to me as a long-time Magic judge), where judges often get carte-blanche to make weird rulings that set some kind of common law precedent because Konami can't be bothered to make comprehensive rules and tournament rules documents held together by things sturdier than chewing gum and twine. A high-level player got a suspension for deliberately having a token in his deck box that his deck couldn't actually make -- in Magic, we call that, "your opponent played themselves." On the opposite end, if you have a card that, say, names a card and makes your opponent discard it if they have it in hand, they apparently can refuse to show you their hand and just say "trust me bro it ain't there." You can call a judge to have them confirm, but given how low their QC is for judging...

There's plenty more asinine design and cultural aspects to the game, but I can feel my blood pressure rising.

I will still occasionally play Master Duel. Sometimes I just get a sadistic urge to inflict pain on someone. I break out a deck designed to play like a Jund deck in mtg and smile with a glint in my eye as players squirm under the bizarre circumstance of my deck actually playing to interact.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/23/24 11:26:27 PM
#102
Okay by "tomorrow" I meant tomorrow from now

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/23/24 12:49:48 AM
#95
I played Duel Masters a bit, but I didn't like the surrounding mechanics enough for the resource system even to "click" in how quality (or not) it was. Didn't try Kaijudo because I heard it's just Duel Masters again.

Lorcana takes a couple elements of it, but it's really more like Keyforge than anything -- which is good, since Keyforge had some great ideas (e.g. being a "race" game instead of a "knockout" game) but the execution was a bit of a mess.

Anyway more tomorrow

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TopicUnicorn Overlord Demo topic?
trdl23
02/22/24 2:35:20 PM
#10
Are there actual unicorns

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 1:41:56 PM
#82
Lopen posted...
There was another game by Wizards of the Coast called Duel Masters that had a really cool mana system where there was no land and every card in the game was overloaded to be able to be played as mana if you chose to play them upside down as your one mana play a turn. For instance you could instead of playing Lightning Bolt that does 3 damage to anything as an instant you could play it upside down and have it function as a mountain.
This is what Lorcana does (and does quite well), though some cards can't be played for mana/"ink." I'm excited to see how that game develops. It has super strong roots.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 1:40:23 PM
#81
KanzarisKelshen posted...
Scorching hot take: Cardgames are better when the resource you fight over is literal board positioning over mana. The game Duelyst died because of mismanagement, but its idea of grid-based combat was a brilliant way of controlling ramp in a consistent resource environment by limiting the amount of ways an opponent could leverage it with smart positioning.
Man I wish you'd been around for Android Netrunner. It's still the greatest card game I've ever played (yes, above mtg) and right up your alley, but the LCG model is just unviable.

Rest in Peace, king

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:44:38 PM
#75
Xtlm posted...
Stronghold Overseer
50/100

One of the cards of all time. Having flying and shadow is pretty funny -- good fuckin luck blocking it

greengravy294 posted...
jace the mind sculptor
85/100

One of the ACTUAL cards of all time. It's kind of incredible how this guy, once one of THE most amazing cards in the game, has become completely "eh" now. Nigh-unplayable in Modern thanks to the Horizons sets fucking everything up and The One Ring just doing his job better at an easier cost. He's only a mid-level pick in Cube now, too.

Still, I want to honor his legacy with this rating. He really was fun to play with, especially in Eternal formats with both better answers to him and support for him. My Jace is signed by Luis Scott-Vargas, and I'll always keep it.

azuarc posted...
Land
85/100

To hijack a quote from Winston Churchill: Magic has the worst resource system of any card game except for all the others that have been tried.

That's not entirely true; Netrunner's freedom and agency in its systems were beautiful, and I still mourn for that game. Still, as much as getting mana-screwed / flooded leads to frustrating non-games, getting guaranteed perfect curves has its own issues, as seen in games like Hearthstone where it makes ramp even more busted. The color system also forces constraints in deckbuilding and makes decks adhere to philosophies without going force-fed cookie-cutter like Yugioh archetypes. The game also gives you plenty of agency on what to do with lands should you so desire, with abilities like Landfall, stuff like Seismic Assault letting you weaponize them, creaturelands letting you actually use excess mana to give you a hidden threat late-game...

You come around on lands once you've played other games. At least I did.

Mobilezoid posted...
Jumpstart
??/100

I never really interacted with it in any capacity so I can't really rate it. I've heard it's good.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:19:33 PM
#73
Raka_Putra posted...
Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated.
77/100

It's been a while since I saw bits and pieces of it, so that's the only thing I can draw from, but iirc it's a nice wholesome manga despite the name. Plus it's by a mangaka who clearly was around for old-school Magic. Apparently it's still going? I'll need to put it along with everything else in my backlog.

pyresword posted...
The Tolarian Community College Youtube channel
88/100

I've gotten kind of exhausted with the channel by now, especially because he focuses so heavily on Commander now. I can't blame him, that is the biggest format in the game now, no matter how much I dislike it. You see one Booster Box Game, you've seen them all; same with Secret Lair reviews.

He still puts out the best product reviews, and he isn't afraid to call out terrible products or choices by HotC, yet he avoids delving into the siren song of cynicism. Even though I only check a few of his videos anymore, it's still the first Youtube channel I recommend any Magic player watch.

redrocket posted...
Magic: The Gathering Arena
71/100

It's f2p Magic. It has the same predatory freemium business model as any other online card game, the wildcard economy sucks ass, and the focus on best-of-one matches is incredibly obnoxious -- especially with the game deliberately smoothing your opening hands in Bo1.

At the same time... it's f2p Magic. I go on Arena almost every day to do my quests. I get to practice drafting for free before I go and spend money to do it IRL. I won a Festival in a Box a few months ago without spending a dime. I get to test out standard decks whenever I want to. The interface largely works (auto-tapper aside, but that's something entirely in the player's hands to use it or not). It looks nice, and it feels nice. If I use it and appreciate it so often, I can't really go too low on my score.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:41:46 AM
#72
redrocket posted...
Wait. So were the Rakdos not pure evil in OG Ravnica?
They absolutely were, sorry that I implied otherwise. They just weren't the "bad guys" that drove the plot and caused the Decamillennial crisis.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:40:22 AM
#71
More tomorrow

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:38:52 AM
#70
Isquen posted...
Everyone Lives! from the Dr. Who set.
84/100

One of the coolest designs I've seen in a while and a great interpretation of one of Who's best moments. Still suffers a bit from being a Doctor Who card and the art making absolutely no sense if you haven't seen the corresponding episode.

Emeraldegg posted...
Secret lairs being limited run instead of print to order
15/100

Trading terrible lead times for mega-FOMO. Secret Lairs suck.

TomNook posted...
Earthbind
69/100

Nice

hylianknight3 posted...
Shandalar
82/100

I never got to play it myself, and it would probably be lower if I had. As an observer, seeing Magic with its wonky AI, 90s CRPG jank exploration mechanics, ante rules, and other stuff... it's not a great game but it's an incredibly charming one. Not to mention the delightful tutorial FMV stuff.

Eddv posted...
The Murders that occured at Karlov manor
40/100

Cool premise, cool set, but the actual story beats grow more wack as I think about them. Teysa's death should have been 5D-chessed to be something she saw coming and could leverage in her favor because 5D-chessing misfortune is Teysa's entire thing. Zegana deserved better too. And Aurelia should've gotten got so that Feather could take her rightful place as Boros guildmaster.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/22/24 12:28:50 AM
#69
Tirofog posted...
Secret Lairs
15/100

I enjoyed a couple of the early Secret Lairs despite the Walking Dead fiasco, but now they're just cancerous. They completely cut out retailers that keep the game thriving and instead just want your money directly for cards that would previously be parts of collections like From the Vault -- which you could buy locally.

Quality issues abound now, especially with foils, and many of their "drops" have atrocious EV and even more atrocious art. I'm all for art experimentation, but I do want my Magic cards to look like, well, Magic cards. All the time and development they invest on this crap would be better served on making cooler art for the normal releases, or at least not burning reprint equity on this.

Don't buy Secret Lairs. Don't give WotC your money. They don't need your money. Local game stores need your money.

GANON1025 posted...
Brian Kibler
80/100

Cool dude as far as I know. Met him once before I knew he was a legend, super chill guy. I think he was glad to have a Magic player not know who he was for once. It's too bad he stopped playing in favor of Hearthstone and even too-er badd-er he ended up as part of the 30th anni fiasco, but I'm not going to hold it against him too much... even if I probably should. Ah well.

Bitto posted...
Timmy, Johnny, and Spike
75/100

These psychographics are really useful from a game design perspective, but like anything resembling pop psychology, they end up being labels players attach to themselves without any nuance nor context. We all have some level of each of these in us, and it can fluctuate day-to-day and format-to-format. Identifying yourself or someone else as a single one of them (especially Spike since it almost always gets used with negative connotation) misses the point.

DireKrow posted...
Niv-Mizzet
100/100.

Is he executed perfectly? Absolutely not. I don't care. Niv is one of the coolest ever takes on an ancient badass dragon. He also has probably the most pants-shittingly terrifying statblock in D&D 5e.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 2:12:13 PM
#56
I was in grad school when it came out, and by the time I started playing again, it had already been banned. Having seen it in Cube though... yeesh.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:47:25 PM
#54
Anyway, more later

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:36:00 PM
#53
Oh right, FIRE design was a pushback against the intentional depowering of Standard that happened in Battle for Zendikar and Kaladesh. It deliberately pushed for more powerful and exciting cards instead, especially at common and uncommon. Unfortunately, it also pushed more and more complexity into higher-rarity cards, resulting in design abominations like Questing Beast and Bonecrusher Giant. Throne of Eldraine gets its bad reputation because it was the first set to explicitly use FIRE design and created multiple obnoxious cards as a result, but FIRE's legacy remains with the ever-heightening power and complexity creeps.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:32:44 PM
#51
Emeraldegg posted...
I protest dimir being purely evil as they were one of the few unambiguously good guilds to help fight off bolas, and were in fact hte main reason ravnica knew bolas was coming

Also what does FIRE mean
The Dimir in the original block were purely evil. They got more nuanced in the future blocks under Lazav's leadership, much like the Rakdos.

Kenri posted...
I regret to inform you that the imp is actually 1/1 for 3. I mainly just like it for the cute art :3
Fuck. I'd drop it by 10 more points, but upon review the art is in fact cute, so it gets to stay where it is.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:30:43 PM
#50
NFUN posted...
my friend Andy who plays too much Magic
95/100

As critical as I have been and will be, I do still love this game. For all its faults, it's one of the best games ever made. There's a reason I keep bouncing off every alternative I try and come back to Magic. It sounds like Andy's in a similar boat.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:26:37 PM
#47
TeamRocketElite posted...
Blacker Lotus
48/100

I used to be bigger on this card, but adding to scarcity of a low-printed set has soured for me in the face of the reserved list in the modern era. It doesn't even have the memetic history of its fellow tear-me-up card from Unglued, Chaos Confetti.

Sceptilesolar posted...
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar
95/100

There's a 0% chance you typed that without looking it up, and that alone makes me love this character. Her story is hilarious, all the flavor text associated with her even moreso -- especially when it's divorced from context of how and why she was compelled to make such bizarre dishes. In that sense I kind of wish I didn't know her story, which is why I can't give her a perfect score. Still, this is the charming goofiness I hope we can find more of in the future. Truly suffering from success.

pjbasis posted...
questing beast
30/100

Go ahead. See if you can recite all of Questing Beast's rules text from memory. I'll wait.

A perfect encapsulation of the problems with FIRE design, even moreso than Oko (who was actually the product of a similar fuckup to Umezawa's Jitte, where they made a supposedly minor change late in development that they didn't get to test well). Plus, it's not even called "THE Questing Beast," leading to damn near everyone to forget it's both Legendary and a major player in Eldraine's culture. Once you parse it, it's not that complex nowadays as more and more abilities get slapped on cards for the purposes of slobbering over Commander, but it was still just a chore to see, read, and play against.

Hbthebattle posted...
Eight Fucking Bears
88/88

holy shit

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 1:12:14 PM
#45
MarkS2222222222 posted...
Dakkon Blackblade
65/100

Really cool card, cool visual design, unique idea. Why is an exclusively lands-matter card in WUB? Because Legends was a weird era, man. The callback with Blackblade Reforged retroactively made him cooler.

Mobilezoid posted...
Thromok the Insatiable
78/100

Clean, simple, yet fun design focused entirely around making a giant idiot. Makes me nostalgic for a time when this was okay for a legendary creature.

Dedf1sh posted...
Nantuko (the race/creature type)
90/100

Nantuko are so goddamn cool. Insect people are usually seen as swarming, gross, brutal masses, and that can be compelling, but seeing them as wise sages of nature who could still chomp on someone's dumb ass makes for a unique visual and flavorful design. One of the big Ws from Odyssey block's design.

Kenri posted...
Teferi's Imp
27/100

Why does Teferi, the wisest man of Jamuraa, have an imp? Why is it in mono-blue? Why was phasing a mechanic, and why would I include such a shitty downside mechanic for incredibly slow looting? At least a 2/2 flyer for 3 was a good rate back then, but come on.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/21/24 12:57:06 PM
#44
BlackMageJawa posted...
Any of these videos about trying to play Magic with cards designed by AI
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLHPZ4KRrrKuyPuiAumJ-aO0x8fP_0Y43
90/100

Largely because Cardmarket content is just wonderful. I'm helping advise a store looking to get into content, and I hold Cardmarket as the gold standard of "fun stuff" unrelated to specific formats.

If you haven't seen Robo Rosewater on Twitter spitting out AI cards, it's a treat -- and somehow better than what you'll see from many "custom MTG" designers.

KanzarisKelshen posted...
Ravnica block (ideally all three parts separately, but an overall rating is cool too)
93/100

You're not getting all three parts separately because I don't feel like writing an analysis the size of a goddamn book.

Original Ravnica is a masterpiece. The best example of bottom-up design creating a world so compelling that modern-day Ravnica is going full Sigil and officially taking Dominaria's place as the "central hub of the multiverse." We describe almost every two-color deck by its guild name. Many characters (or at least their successors) are well known even to fresh players because of how iconic they have become. Hybriid mana was a brilliant fresh piece of design that allowed for lore conveyance, accessibility, and multicolor payoffs even when mana issues would occur. The Ravnica trilogy of novels were fantastic pieces told episodically that blended into a fantastic payoff as the dissolution of the Guildpact welcomed all of the guilds' scheming for power to be brought into the light, while our protagonist Agrus Kos is increasingly disgruntled at having to prevent one madman after another from trying to subvert and/or conquer the city-world. Each guild was portrayed to have both wonderful and terrible qualities to them (except the Dimir, you need some thoroughly bad guys after all). I've DM'd a D&D campaign set in Ravnica where I drew upon both the novels and the cards themselves to generate experiences my players still talk about 5 years later.

Why do I dock 7 points from it, then? Because most of the actual guild mechanics lowkey suck.

-The Selesnyan mechanic, Convoke, was brilliant and deserves its place as getting rerun throughout other sets, even getting color-shifted multiple times. It is still best as a green-white mechanic, though. The rest? Well...
-The Boros mechanic, Radiance, played incredibly poorly in such a multicolor and hybrid-rich environment. You were often going to hit your own guys with bad effects and/or pump your opponents' guys with good effects, and while I miss symmetry in modern card design, this was egregiously awkward.
-The Dimir mechanic, Transmute, turned mediocre spells into hyper-specific tutors. This just didn't agree with their focus on milling (which itself was really cool for the time). It has enabled some combo ridiculousness though since Transmute dodges counterspells.
-The Golgari mechanic, Dredge, snapped the game in half.
-The Orzhov mechanic, Haunt, was extremely awkward to make work because it meant way too many conditions were needed to get a second, often lackluster payoff. The "good" haunt cards were generally just good ETB effects with the Haunt portion being ignorable.
-The Gruul mechanic, Bloodthirst, played pretty well and gave Red-Green a new focus to get aggressive early in order to make the big threats the combo is most known for.
-The Izzet mechanic, Replicate, was pretty cool, but it made it incredibly difficult to counter spells for the same reason as Storm cards: You can only counter one instance of it. I know it's hard to feel bad for counterspells, but it's the main way to interact with the instants and sorceries UR now leans on.
-The Azorius mechanic, Forecast, made absolutely no goddamn sense by making you tap mana on your upkeep in a color combo that largely wants to play Draw-Go.
-The Simic mechanic, Graft, had cool ideas but required you to play incredibly mediocre cards to compensate for supposed versatility that really wasn't there.
-The Rakdos mechanic, Hellbent, was perfect in terms of flavor, but having no cards in hand is pretty bad, and the payoffs for going Hellbent did not justify the inherently bad position you put yourself into. Strangely enough it would play far better nowadays, since Red's card-advantage mechanic of exiling cards to play in a limited time window gives a player options while still being Hellbent.

So yeah, three out of ten mechanics hitting isn't a great track record, which is why I can't give the most beloved block in MTG history a perfect score. I dock one point per mechanical failure. The rest is wonderful.

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/20/24 10:51:42 PM
#37
Hasbro; in the same way that Blizzard is just Activision now, WotC is just Hasbro now

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TopicTrdl rates anything Magic the Gathering related
trdl23
02/20/24 10:49:27 PM
#33
More tomorrow

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