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Post by sdfkjgh on Jun 26, 2020 14:30:06 GMT
So, yeah, this is extremely late, and I apologise. The thing is, I’ve got 10 vids of the Arena Open, for a total of 6:25:46, and I live in a fucking wifi desert. AT&T says that the normal fastest upload speed is 10mb/s, but out here in Panorama City, CA, near the Van Nuys/Roscoe intersection, that max speed is limited to just 3! Three times, I left my laptop on over multiple days and nights, just to upload those vids, first and second to an email to our ever patient editor, Daij_Djan (who informed me, after the second attempt actually went through, that the files couldn’t be uploaded to these forums that way), and third to youtube (which crashed at the 82% point of the first video, some three days and two nights after I started the upload process). While all this was happening in my little neck of the woodsconcrete, the world was exploding, with the worldwide protests against police brutality, businesses opening up way too damn early, trump and his gop enablers continuing to treat our Laws and Constitution as their own personal toilet paper, Wizards finally admitting their mistakes, the response/clapback to that ( some good, but most of it was ignorant/racist trash. Just look to all the links in the description of this episode of Magic Mics for the cream of the crop and the dross of the bottom), and twitter locked me out because its algorithm determined that I’m a bot of some type. Basically, the world continues to deteriorate, I feel fine?1 With the recent changes to Standard, it’s the healthiest it’s been in days, save a few “oopsies” that somehow managed to fall through the cracks2. While I’m glad they finally did something about literal neonazi harold mcneill, and the Gatherer numerical code for Invoke Prejudice being a literal neonazi code number, I’m rather disappointed in them for taking this long, despite numerous complaints to do so. Similarly, I’m glad they showed some cultural sensitivity with most of the rest of the problematic cards, but I’m disappointed they didn’t talk to anyone from the prospective groups about the best way forward. And that’s all I have to say about that.One last article I’d like to point out before we move along.So, the day before I wrote this, I was contacted by a representative of Actors for Autism (they were put in touch with me via The Regional Center, I’m hoping they can provide me a path to working at WotC), and this guy had only heard of Magic, not anything about what it is, mind you, he’s just aware if its existence. He asked for a good starting place, and I told him Mark Rosewater, because MaRo. I listed that MaRo has a twitter, tumblr, instagram, facebook, but I forgot one thing. That night, I remembered the social media outlet that I forgot, and I want to share with you all my thought process: - The scene: my hallway. Time: 11:26p-11:33p, Juneteenth, 2020.
“oh, right, he DOES have a tiktok. Jesus, does the man never sleep? OH HOLY CRAP! THAT’S WHY HE LOVES DOUBLING THINGS SO MUCH! Multiplicity is secretly a documentary of Mark Rosewater’s life! And all the times Wizards has had to relearn the exact same mistakes? Those are just 2nd (clone of a clone) -or higher- generation clones making those decisions! IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!”
End scene.
So yeah, all that’s why there hasn’t been a column in weeks. Well, that and my general laziness and lack of motivation/inspiration. Daij_Djan has told me he’s looking into ways to bring the Arena Open footage to the column via ways and locations more conducive to uploading than speeds of 3/10mbps, so thanks for that, and everything else you do here, fren. Until next time, which’ll prolly be “whenever I feel like it”, this is that weird guy who did that one thing with any import or regularity, then just decided to say fuck it. {Footnotes} | 1 | Play at 0.25 speed for full effect. | | | 0 | | 2 | Ryan Normandin even managed to correctly identify Rule #1. Class, what is Rule #1?
Everyone: DON’T SUBVERT THE MANA SYSTEM!3 | | | 0 | | 3 | While I don’t fully agree with his extreme view of fully abolishing all ramp/fixing, I do agree that too much at the same time breaks the game, and that this Standard was too much. An occasional sprinkling (no more than three unique, tournament-worthy cards) every second or third rotation is fine. |
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Post by Lady Mapi on Jun 26, 2020 16:14:31 GMT
As someone who loves ramp, I feel personally attacked.  However, most of the cards that were brought up as "ramp" aren't really traditional ramp. Traditional ramp pushes your manabase forward by a turn or two, with massive upswings of mana being a final snowball effect before you win. You're still on some kind of curve - heck, sometimes it just means that you're able to "play" a land every turn, so that you'll actually be able to play your 7-drop on turn 7. Plus, outside of cards like Beanstalk Giant, drawing one of your payoff cards instead of a ramp card means that you probably aren't ramping that turn.
For reference, I have a casual ramp deck that can untap with 7 lands on T4 as its best case scenario, which requires that I draw some very specific cards: T1. Forest, Arboreal Grazer, Ramp in a forest. T2. Khalni Heart Expedition. Play a Forest. T3. Play a Forest. Play one of my three-mana ramp cards. Crack KHE to ramp out two more lands. T4. Untap with seven lands. I feel like this is OK, for multiple reasons: - My early game is stupidly vulnerable, since I'm more focused on getting lands out than defending myself.
- I have to go all-in on it, because mixing in too many payoff cards can block me from that kind of accelerated start.
- It's much more likely for me to untap with five lands on T4. Or, heck, just four - on a bad initial draw, I'm basically spending cards to drop lands on-curve.
Cards like Fires of Invention or Nissa, Who Shakes The World can more than double your mana with very minimal effort, and you can drop them as early as T3/T4. They take that complicated start I laid out, compress it into a single card, then let it keep going. It's absolutely disgusting. I'll argue that Wilderness Reclamation isn't an inherently problematic effect - it's just that it probably shouldn't be an easily-splashable 4-drop. All of the previous versions of this effect that I've seen have either costed   or were over CMC 4, and were more-or-less fine. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Jun 26, 2020 22:28:18 GMT
Lady Mapi - If you look really closely, the "r" in ramp actually has a Llanowar Elves link. Easily missed but I found it funny when I noticed it. = P That said, for all WoTC's talk of weakening ramp, I think ramp is actually in a really good place as is currently with cards like Arboreal Grazer. For all their statements about not wanting to print 1 mana dork ramp a few years ago, WOTC's printing of Arboreal Grazer is arguably better than a 1 mana dork in standard because it lives in an environment where the baseline removal is usually some kind of Shock and most 1-drops and even a good portion of two drops don't go above 2 power. If that wasn't bad enough, the ramp it provides is in the form of a land, i.e. killing the Grazer doesn't impact your mana and most land removal is 3 mana or more. Add to the fact you can easily curve into Uro/ Azusa/ Cultivate and then Nissa, Who Shakes the World and you have a very resilient deck that practically builds itself. So I'd say ramp, at least in Standard, is in the best place it's been in a while. (Also, while we're talking budget - Arboreal Grazer and Cultivate are both under a dollar. Looking at it from a Spike perspective your sweet spot in budget land is probably to go for something like Growth Spasm which is functionally similar to Cultivate but 0.26 or something like Rampant Growth or Search for Tomorrow for greater opening hand flexibility. If the sweet spot is 5 mana there's plenty of ETB threats like Thragtusk, Entourage of Trest, or perhaps even Viven, Nature's Avenger. That last one is particularly interesting... I think I might juts have a new list in a few hours, lol.) As for not-ramp ramp, I think it's also worth pointing out that there are two reasons fetches aren't typically printed anymore: - The given reason by WoTC is that it leads to a lot of shuffling which is supposedly annoying. - The real reason is that WoTC realizes they are money cards and wants to keep them that way. TCC's Professor had a great video on this in regarding to Secret Lair Ultimate Edition, but this applies to all recent fetches. Heck, look at Prismatic Vista and to a lesser extent Fabled Passage - fetching to fix mana is such a common part of the game that any time a good fetch comes out it's almost always jumped on by the playerbase, and we're not even talking about the main cycle.
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Post by sdfkjgh on Jun 27, 2020 17:11:57 GMT
ZephyrPhantom: Glad to know at least somebody's noticing these subtle little touches. They're part of the reason why these columns take me so damn long to write. Also, it's the "ra", and not just the "r". But good on yer for noticing.
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