MTGNexus

I saw a Jon Irenicus, Shattered One that donated a bunch of cards then got them back w/ Homeward Path in order to abuse the can't be sacrificed ability they gained.

Ah yes we have one of those in our group. My favorite play so far has been gifting the Animar player a Desecration Elemental.

Dunadain wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I saw a Jon Irenicus, Shattered One that donated a bunch of cards then got them back w/ Homeward Path in order to abuse the can't be sacrificed ability they gained.

I briefly played an Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder deck that tried to end the game in a draw with Assault Suit. It wasn't popular.

This Reddit post reminded me of a conversation we had a few months back. Be welcoming to new players!

The sad story of a Commander wanna-be

Thought I'd share my tale so a laugh can be had at my expense.
I am 42, have casually collected MTG cards for roughly 20 years (never actually played any format) and have wanted to start playing EDH/Commander for a few years now. Problem is I am incredibly shy and get extremely nervous when trying to integrate into groups.
Over the last year I have built a few EDH decks, sleeved them up, made sure I have all the tokens I need, bought a playmat and contacted my LGS to find out when they hold their Commander night (Fridays).

Today marks the 2nd Friday I have plucked up the courage to attend, introduced myself, sat there for 1-2 hours and then left having not played a single game. Any table of players I spoke to told me to just sit elsewhere and someone will eventually offer for me to join in. Never happened.
I feel so embarrassed, when I got home I told my wife I worked late.

Apologies for this rather pathetic story, I had to get it off my chest somewhere 🤣

DirkGently wrote: ↑

1 year ago

This Reddit post reminded me of a conversation we had a few months back. Be welcoming to new players!

The sad story of a Commander wanna-be

Thought I'd share my tale so a laugh can be had at my expense.
I am 42, have casually collected MTG cards for roughly 20 years (never actually played any format) and have wanted to start playing EDH/Commander for a few years now. Problem is I am incredibly shy and get extremely nervous when trying to integrate into groups.
Over the last year I have built a few EDH decks, sleeved them up, made sure I have all the tokens I need, bought a playmat and contacted my LGS to find out when they hold their Commander night (Fridays).

Today marks the 2nd Friday I have plucked up the courage to attend, introduced myself, sat there for 1-2 hours and then left having not played a single game. Any table of players I spoke to told me to just sit elsewhere and someone will eventually offer for me to join in. Never happened.
I feel so embarrassed, when I got home I told my wife I worked late.

Apologies for this rather pathetic story, I had to get it off my chest somewhere 🤣

Damn. I feel this guy. The lgs near my GF place is very much not a welcoming place. And I have sat there for a while just alone. Lowkey sucks

I can relate. I never know anyone at the LGS because I get to play... once every six to eight months maybe. So when I do show up I just awkwardly sit at the tables and hope a game starts that happens to include me because I have the social skills of a rough hewn slab of granite. Unfortunately, last time I went to my LGS I kinda had the opposite problem, I found a group, but they were... how do I put this delicately,,, rubbing me the wrong way.

For starters, the power levels were somewhat skewed, with one of the decks being a Riku of Two Reflections deck that felt like it was just copy and past every Temur staple and call it a deck. I.e Dockside, Craterhoof, Urza.... oh my. Then there was a Rakdos deck that was pretty much the exact opposite of that, being lots of pet cards/jank vampire tribal. The last deck was some five color soup. Now, all that aside, the big issue was just how much these people talked. Like, I'm all for a lively game with banter and chatter, but this was not that.

I mean they talked for like five minutes straight without playing a card. Just nonstop (bad) jokes and endless stories and juvenile (No, you don't understand. JUVENILE) puns that were crude and boring at the same time. I think they made what would've been a thirty minute game into a hour long slog because of the sheer amount of talking that took place instead of playing. I desperately wanted to swap tables once I figured out the way things were going, but every other table was full.

Eventually, by the time we got ready to head to the second game and things were shaping up to be another eternity of not playing magic and listening to incredibly awkward jokes, I just packed up my stuff and thanked them for the game. Hopefully sometime before next year I'll get one more opportunity to play MTG.

I read the thread that dirk is referring to and everyone feels for the guy, it doesn't help that he's in the UK (lots of offers for him to come to play with groups), in his 40s, and very shy like the rest of us (maybe).

__

I need this https://hasbropulse.com/collections/new ... ollectible

It's embarrassing that shops don't have a matchmaking system for commander players. If they do they tend to charge exorbitantly ($5 a game here).

So many socially reserved people who don't know how to approach strangers in the community you'd think it'd be natural to be accommodating.

Unfortunately doing it with a public online app probably is not feasible due to geographic reality (and privacy issues!) but it's something that occurred to me.

If you had an a app where you could hoist the lfg flag that'd be kinda cool, and people nearby could see you

Dang, that is a sad story. And it reminds me of @ISBPathfinder's plight of assigned seating at his LGS. I wonder which is worse overall: having no agency over the composition of pods because of a tournament-esque structure enforced by the location or because of unspoken social cliques?

On one hand, the assigned seating rustles my jimmies something awful. How dare you dictate the terms of my free time if there's no prizes/actual competition! I shouldn't need an MLB umpire to play catch with my friends. Feels intrusive and over-regulated imho.

On the other hand, I think we've all been the odd man out at least once in our lives, whether as the last kid not picked for dodgeball or the new kid in class or the uncool kid at camp. And that feeling majorly bites, because the path to inclusion is pretty far from obvious or strictly merit-based.

In the assigned seating, I guess at least you get to play, but you might not be able to avoid power/personality mismatches that turn games into miserable slogs. In the open water with no friends though, that's obviously not a good place to be. I think that dude's best strategy going is to introduce a few of his existing friends (I'm assuming this guy has other friends because otherwise this really is a sad sad story) to magic and try to show up with at least another person. That way, he can at least jam some 1v1 and still have room to bring in other stragglers. If the cliques will not have you, build thine own I suppose.

Assuming this is the saddest story ever told though, he should try to show up earlier. Usually even the impenetrable cliques can't all assemble at the same time, so there are more yet-available individuals at the beginning of a game night than at its midpoint. Even if someone is waiting for their friends, they'd probably rather jam a game than twiddle their thumbs, so he could catch a few games that way and in the process, introduce himself to the local community and break down some of the "outsider!" aura that keeps him from being included. Make a good enough impression and maybe exchange some phone numbers, get a group chat going, and keep chipping away until gooble-gobble they accept him, one of them. Not easy or quick to do and requires guts, but that's how I'd do it if I were him.

Yeah if you rock up to mine brand new, you just get absorbed into the next pod that fires. We've really worked on making it as not cliquey as possible. It helps that we slowly weeded out all the arseholes.

Dragonlover

I love talking about mtg online, I trully do. But I went to LGS this week and it is such a breath of fresh air. Nobody complaining about m30 or whatever topic toxic mtg personalities decided it would be a topic today. They just talked about cool cards they liked and cool plays. Twitter and reddit can be fun but mtg personalities complain too much driving the discourse, its fun to be somewhere they enjoy the game

I've got an Odyssey / Judgement / Torment draft in person with my brother this evening. I'm extremely hyped! I did one of these drafts a few years back. I drafted a W/R threshold(ish?) deck with Archangel and Valor. I got to the finals and I won game three when my opponent decked out because he cast Far Wanderings with threshold early in the game and had less cards in library than me. It was a rare draft so that's how I got my Cabal Coffers that inspired my high CMC deck.

Also, my brother owns the original art for Forbid and Shard Phoenix. They look hawt.

Having played a lot of limited during that era I think OTJ was actually a pretty fun and well designed format. Then they followed it up with the absolute dreck that was Onslaught block.

it's done my low-skill/low budget gender flip Chandra Nalarr. My friend took the pics at my churches Halloween party

Lifeless wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Having played a lot of limited during that era I think OTJ was actually a pretty fun and well designed format. Then they followed it up with the absolute dreck that was Onslaught block.

Drafted an esper deck with Iridescent Angel and Commander Eesha with Diabolic Tutor. I only had 11 creatures so people just curved out on me. There was a couple games I cast the angel and then died because I didn't have enough stuff to lock down the board. Twas unfortunate.

Iridescent Angel was always a trap card for me - the format is pretty slow but even still 7 can be a big ask. I usually tried to avoid black unless I could sus out the person on my left wasn't in black, but a splash can work. Better luck next time.

Lifeless wrote: ↑

1 year ago

Iridescent Angel was always a trap card for me - the format is pretty slow but even still 7 can be a big ask. I usually tried to avoid black unless I could sus out the person on my left wasn't in black, but a splash can work. Better luck next time.

P1P1 was Iridescent Angel vs Overrun. I went with angel because it's a huge angel. The person to my right opened Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor and cut blue pretty hard. They started cutting white but then switched to UR. I couldn't figure out where they were at and I was just flailing around looking for playables. I was basically willing to be anything but green and pack 2 was solid for me. Pack three I felt like I got passed only green cards.

I ended up having to play Carrion Rats because I was so low on creatures.

The angel was a huuuuge bomb. I don't really regret picking it. If I'd just had 2-3 more bodies of any size I think I would have had one of the best decks in the pod. There was a couple of games I had a 2/2 and Iridescent Angel at 8 life and my opponent had 4 2/2s so I just couldn't attack. Then they eventually just drew a shock, killed my non-angel and alpha'd me out.

materpillar wrote: ↑

1 year ago

P1P1 was Iridescent Angel vs Overrun. I went with angel because it's a huge angel. The person to my right opened Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor and cut blue pretty hard. They started cutting white but then switched to UR. I couldn't figure out where they were at and I was just flailing around looking for playables. I was basically willing to be anything but green and pack 2 was solid for me. Pack three I felt like I got passed only green cards.

I almost always try to not commit to two+ colors as my P1P1 pull. Its usually healthier to pull single color cards upfront and just keep taking the best cards for the first half of a pack trying not to commit to any colors in that first half of the first pack. Don't worry if you don't get to play all of the cards being flexible and finding where people ahead of you aren't is usually far stronger for the rest of the draft than committing yourself to colors upfront.

ISBPathfinder wrote: ↑

1 year ago

materpillar wrote: ↑

1 year ago

P1P1 was Iridescent Angel vs Overrun. I went with angel because it's a huge angel. The person to my right opened Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor and cut blue pretty hard. They started cutting white but then switched to UR. I couldn't figure out where they were at and I was just flailing around looking for playables. I was basically willing to be anything but green and pack 2 was solid for me. Pack three I felt like I got passed only green cards.

I almost always try to not commit to two+ colors as my P1P1 pull. Its usually healthier to pull single color cards upfront and just keep taking the best cards for the first half of a pack trying not to commit to any colors in that first half of the first pack. Don't worry if you don't get to play all of the cards being flexible and finding where people ahead of you aren't is usually far stronger for the rest of the draft than committing yourself to colors upfront.

I usually agree but Iridescent Angel is an obscene bomb. It doesn't look like it by now a days standard but it's on the level of The Scarab God. It either outright won me the game or single-handedly stonewalled my opponents for multiple turns. I drafted like it was a blue/white hybrid card, I was expecting to be 3 colors with one of the angel's colors being a splash. I think the color commitment was roughly the same as Overrun.

materpillar wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I usually agree but Iridescent Angel is an obscene bomb. It doesn't look like it by now a days standard but it's on the level of The Scarab God. It either outright won me the game or single-handedly stonewalled my opponents for multiple turns. I drafted like it was a blue/white hybrid card, I was expecting to be 3 colors with one of the angel's colors being a splash. I think the color commitment was roughly the same as Overrun.

Even thought the GGG of Overrun is harder it opens you up to being more flexible with what other color you pick up. I am more saying that the quality of your cards as a whole probably improves even if its at the cost of having a worse first pick.

Beyond that passing the angel is information you would have and that probably gives you information for pack two that someone in the 1-2 players behind you are going to want to push for UW and it might give incentive not to fall into the same archetype / colors as them.

Yeah, taking overrun and passing angel basically signs you up for GR or GB or mono G aggro I'd think That is some next level %$#% of trapping your downstream opponent into a known color pair bomb

The angel also tends to fall into a more controlling UW setup and you could try to still be in blue or white on a more aggro front using small / evasive creatures its unlikely they are after those type of cards in blue and white with that angel as an early pull. It would make it harder to pull removal from those colors but not necessarily rule them out as you are upstream of them for two packs still.

There's something to be said about putting the person on your left into W and then planning to cut off W in the Judgement pack since you're in front of them again and there's a good chance you've already solidified GW before then if it's open.

I tried (and failed) to get the advent calendar. I knew it would be hard to buy with the close postage date. Wish next time they do this, they restrict the amount someone can buy so we don't get screwed by scalpers

duducrash wrote: ↑

1 year ago

I tried (and failed) to get the advent calendar. I knew it would be hard to buy with the close postage date. Wish next time they do this, they restrict the amount someone can buy so we don't get screwed by scalpers

Even if they restrict that, people will write bots to sign up additional accounts

I feel like there's got to be some kind of solution to this nonsense where supply is artificially gated on everything by people buying it all up and hoarding it. It's pretty much the definition of the downside to capitalism, but as we know fixing that has proven intractible.

The only answer I can really think of is some kind of real person ID system, but then 1) that's a huge privacy problem and 2) people would game that by getting other peopel to lend them their identities.

It really sucks.