MTG Salvation

Quote from Tartaras »

Got to play Zo-Zu the Punisher for the firs time last night, and it was a blast. The first game I played was in the free pods for our Commander FNM, and it was great. I reigned it in initially, because while they play for points to figure out who gets the promo, I couldn't care any less, and I didn't want to sabotage their game. For a large portion of the game, all I had out was Zo-Zu with Lightning Greaves and Tectonic Instability. Then I just sat there and let the table kill itself. One guy was using his Fertilid to make another player search for a basic land, which I thought was hysterical.

Afterword, I played a couple games with my friends who have more tuned decks, and as expected I was definitely not favored to win the game. They usually try and make the most of their turns, and here I was just playing a pressure card and passing. That said, I did force interaction at least, since Sulfuric Vortex and Leyline of Punishment are problems for the Atraxa, Praetors' Voice on the table. The games also ended a lot quicker than they normally would have, with the first one ending in 7 turns thanks to T2 Ankh of Mishra into T3 Zo-Zu.

I absolutely foresee myself keeping this deck together for a while, since it was just so much fun to play.

Im glad it worked out. The biggest issue I have always had with Zozu is that he punishes ramp hard do nothing decks fairly well but if they actually curve in nicely and come at you it can be rather daunting. There is also the problem of if they are a control deck with actual access to lifegain as their ability to remove your ability to hold back them gaining life is probably not going to work.

Life gain should be banned. It's not fair.

Yeah I was actually pleasantly surprised with how well it worked out. It's my first time ever really building a pressure deck, and I don't usually like being the archenemy or the threat at the table.

The whole reason why my favorite deck, Omnath, Locus of Mana, was even allowed to get as powerful and obnoxious as it did was purely because we generally frown on MLD. If there was a deck like this, or any other group slug / punisher strategy, in our group, I feel things would go wildly different. My friend was playing Maelstrom Wanderer and was just cracking fetches and losing 7 life a shot with an Oracle of Mul Daya out.

Woot I just closed out my first solo win in cod4 blackout. It was an 8 kill game ending next to the hydro dam. I took the high ground thanks to a grappling hook and took down the last player who was at my mercy being below me.

There's basically almost no time to play Magic anymore, but my inspired nature is being put to use elsewhere

I am having the fun of coming back into the office for several hours to read an 867 page technical document detailing a bid to create a system after having already put in an 8.5 hour day. This for the record is only one of three documents I am supposed to review and have detailed information ready for a meeting tomorrow. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE who needs sleep....

Quote from ISBPathfinder »

who needs sleep....

yeah well you're never gonna get it

2.5 hours in I..... mostly finished my first one and am moving to the second one. I just hit my 12th hour of work today.

Oof. Time and a half at least, hopefully?

Nope, not authorized for overtime. I ended up calling it a day at 13 hours. My brain turned to mush at that point and I knew I wouldn’t be productive.

I do get to flex my work week but mostly I would rather have a normal week than to already have all of Friday off on Monday.

Quote from Hermes_ »

yeah well you're never gonna get it

Never gonna get it, never gonna get it.

So recently, I've become interested in a question: given a list of n random numbers between 1 and 10, how many additional numbers between 1 and 10 would I need to add to this list on average in order to find the greatest possible average of numbers on the list? Provided that I 1.) always start by adding the greatest number possible and 2.) can add the same number as many times as I like, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward. I would add '10s' forever, and the average would always eke closer towards 10 without ever reaching it. The number of additional numbers I would need to add to maximize the average would be infinitely long.

Say something changes though. What if, after using the greatest possible number (10), I couldn't use 10 again? What if I could now only use the next greatest number? If I wanted to only use whole numbers, that would be 9, but there's really no reason I couldn't use rational numbers, so let's just say the next biggest number is 9.9, and every subsequent number decreases by 0.1 after that. Now something interesting happens. As I add more and more numbers to this list, eventually the average of all the listed numbers exceeds the value of the next greatest number I can possibly add. At that point, I've reached the maximum, and any number added past that point will only decrease the average.

Now, the "number of numbers" needed to reach this maximum depends upon a number of things, namely what the random starting numbers are, how many there are, and how fast I set the decay rate, but despite these dependencies, it's interesting seeing how these numbers relate to one another.

Quote from arrogantAxolotl »

So recently, I've become interested in a question: given a list of n random numbers between 1 and 10, how many additional numbers between 1 and 10 would I need to add to this list on average in order to find the greatest possible average of numbers on the list? Provided that I 1.) always start by adding the greatest number possible and 2.) can add the same number as many times as I like, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward. I would add '10s' forever, and the average would always eke closer towards 10 without ever reaching it. The number of additional numbers I would need to add to maximize the average would be infinitely long.

Say something changes though. What if, after using the greatest possible number (10), I couldn't use 10 again? What if I could now only use the next greatest number? If I wanted to only use whole numbers, that would be 9, but there's really no reason I couldn't use rational numbers, so let's just say the next biggest number is 9.9, and every subsequent number decreases by 0.1 after that. Now something interesting happens. As I add more and more numbers to this list, eventually the average of all the listed numbers exceeds the value of the next greatest number I can possibly add. At that point, I've reached the maximum, and any number added past that point will only decrease the average.

Now, the "number of numbers" needed to reach this maximum depends upon a number of things, namely what the random starting numbers are, how many there are, and how fast I set the decay rate, but despite these dependencies, it's interesting seeing how these numbers relate to one another.

I saw math and checked out.

It's waaaaaaaaay too early for that.

Quote from arrogantAxolotl »

So recently, I've become interested in a question: given a list of n random numbers between 1 and 10, how many additional numbers between 1 and 10 would I need to add to this list on average in order to find the greatest possible average of numbers on the list? Provided that I 1.) always start by adding the greatest number possible and 2.) can add the same number as many times as I like, the answer to that question is fairly straightforward. I would add '10s' forever, and the average would always eke closer towards 10 without ever reaching it. The number of additional numbers I would need to add to maximize the average would be infinitely long.

Say something changes though. What if, after using the greatest possible number (10), I couldn't use 10 again? What if I could now only use the next greatest number? If I wanted to only use whole numbers, that would be 9, but there's really no reason I couldn't use rational numbers, so let's just say the next biggest number is 9.9, and every subsequent number decreases by 0.1 after that. Now something interesting happens. As I add more and more numbers to this list, eventually the average of all the listed numbers exceeds the value of the next greatest number I can possibly add. At that point, I've reached the maximum, and any number added past that point will only decrease the average.

Now, the "number of numbers" needed to reach this maximum depends upon a number of things, namely what the random starting numbers are, how many there are, and how fast I set the decay rate, but despite these dependencies, it's interesting seeing how these numbers relate to one another.

Potato

Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/356/

Quote from cryogen »

Quote from Hermes_ »

yeah well you're never gonna get it

Never gonna get it, never gonna get it.

I was thinking more of Bare naked Ladies' "Who needs sleep?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4pqqzFWedc

There are some interesting webpages that you stumble on when you accidentally enter MTGD instead of mtgs into your taskbar... http://www.medicagogenome.org/

Quote from CasualCalamity1 »

There are some interesting webpages that you stumble on when you accidentally enter MTGD instead of mtgs into your taskbar... http://www.medicagogenome.org/

Misread as medicgnome.org. on the plus side, I have a new idea for a D&D character.

Quote from cryogen »

Misread as medicgnome.org. on the plus side, I have a new idea for a D&D character.

I've been bouncing the idea of an American medical system-inspired cleric. Heal the party but keep a detailed ledger of costs and payments, complete with interest. Possibly dabble in necromancy to ensure that everyone pays their medical debt in full. A friend of mine wants to run the Ravnica campaign when it comes out and that feels like a great opportunity for it thanks to the Orzhov.

Otherwise, it's probably third on the list of characters I want to play behind the Wizard of Oz halfling and redneck aasimar.

Quote from Weebo »

I've been bouncing the idea of an American medical system-inspired cleric. Heal the party but keep a detailed ledger of costs and payments, complete with interest. Possibly dabble in necromancy to ensure that everyone pays their medical debt in full. A friend of mine wants to run the Ravnica campaign when it comes out and that feels like a great opportunity for it thanks to the Orzhov.

Otherwise, it's probably third on the list of characters I want to play behind the Wizard of Oz halfling and redneck aasimar.

I want to run a half-orc board that's really good bard.... by orc standards. By basically anyone else's, not so much. I just can't think of a hook to make it fun for more than one session.

I feel like that's a common problem, especially for the gimmicky stuff. There's a pretty good chance that I'd run into the same thing with the cleric insurance agent - it would be an entertaining thing for a session, then the ledger keeping and such would get tedious and annoying to everyone else and I would drop it. Terrible bard at least has some room for backstory and character growth that could keep it feeling fresh for a while. Out of character, everyone's tolerance for it probably depends on how much time you spend singing badly.

My current character is a very archetypal dwarf paladin, with the twist that he's monotheistic. The god he follows is the only actual god, with other members of the dwarven pantheon being different aspects of the one and other racial pantheons not being divine at all. I really like the idea of denying the existence of gods in a setting where they demonstrably exist and regularly interact with the population.

Quote from Weebo »

I feel like that's a common problem, especially for the gimmicky stuff. There's a pretty good chance that I'd run into the same thing with the cleric insurance agent - it would be an entertaining thing for a session, then the ledger keeping and such would get tedious and annoying to everyone else and I would drop it. Terrible bard at least has some room for backstory and character growth that could keep it feeling fresh for a while. Out of character, everyone's tolerance for it probably depends on how much time you spend singing badly.

My current character is a very archetypal dwarf paladin, with the twist that he's monotheistic. The god he follows is the only actual god, with other members of the dwarven pantheon being different aspects of the one and other racial pantheons not being divine at all. I really like the idea of denying the existence of gods in a setting where they demonstrably exist and regularly interact with the population.

So pretty much like here except with zero actual gods instead of a bunch.

Quote from cryogen »

So pretty much like here except with zero actual gods instead of a bunch.

I may be borrowing slightly from various religious fundamentalists.