Yes it does. If you do the math on it, there's more times you'd rather have the 61st bullet than not run it at all. Adrian Sullivan did an article on it if I recall.
Wow, I thought I had to stalk you on TheSource to see what you're running. My nit-picky questions
1 - Dryad Arbor with only a miser GSZ (no KotR)?
2 - Why Lingering?
3 - Why not Confidant #4 instead of Library #3?
4 - I lack goyfs. What would you run to "replace" it?
5 - No Thalia?
You're a fantastic player. Just picking your brain.
1) The Dryad Arbor is there in case you get the GSZ hand with no DRS, as well as the surprise blocker or creature to hook equipment up to. I've won a good portion of games to having equipment open and fetching Arbor EOT to connect. It's also a surprise extra creature in blocking or against Liliana.
2) Lingering Souls was Doran actually for the past two months. Doran tested REALLY well in a Delver and DnT meta (because 1/1 TNN isn't that good, and neither are 1/1 flickerwisps, Thalias, and Revokers but buffing DRS, SFM, and Goyf is excellent). The problem? Miracles is on the rise so you need an attrition-based creature against Jace. Souls helps pressure Walkers as well as carry Equipment.
3) While both are good cards, they do different things. Confidant only allows you to draw one extra card per turn, and it's VERY powerful, but Sylvan can allow you to draw 2 extra cards in a single turn, or give you information about upcoming draws. Sylvan is powerful against Miracles as well, whereas Confidant, while powerful, dies to most of their removal. Overall, I like the 3/3 split but if I had an extra slot, I'd add the last confidant.
4) There is no replacing Goyf, sadly. If I were in your place, if I have 3-4 Goyf slots, I would run 2-3 Doran the Siege Tower and the last Confidant. Doran is very buff and well costed (5/5 for 3 mana), but isn't great against STP.
5) There's no Thalia in the main for obvious reasons (you play more spells than Maverick does), and none in the board since Thalia doesn't hate on Miracles enough. Meddling Mage stops STP and Teeg hangles the rest of their deck, from Humility, Terminus, Entreat, Jace, EE, etc. Mage is also an edge aaginst Sneak and Show and Punishing Jund.
As for KotR, there's a few problems with him, and it's why I didn't suggest him. I played Knight until TNN came out, and the problem is with DRS around as well, Knight cannot profitably attack (unless you're hooking up SOFI, in which case, God help your opponent) into a TNN, cannot usually buff up very much, and has no evasion. It doesn't fly, trample, or have protection. It does Wasteland, but who are you doing that to on Turn 4? Not Miracles. I think you could try him to replace Goyf, and maybe in your metagame he'll be fine. Most of the time, I've found the meta shift to push him a bit out of the forefront. I do love the card.
On contrast, I feel that if you build around Knight, it's a fine card. I think if you run the Depths package as a distinct deck, I think that strategy has merit. I just feel the value-Knight is worse than it used to be.
I placed second at StarCity Games. The list was pretty good all day. Are there any questions in particular about the list or certain matchups I could answer?
All of this back and forth seems pointless. I think leaving Iran alone is probably the best idea for now.
Economic sanctions are breaking the Iranian's backs, and the dollar is going down the tubes. Inflation is rising, and income is dropping. With the Iranian oil sanctions on at the moment, how is Iran going to subsidize post secondary education?
The problem I see with the sanctions are as follows.
1) It makes Iran super desperate. This is not necessarily a good thing, but when you might start to have starving people, a flailing dollar, and no income, what have they got to lose?
2) If they can't afford to subsidize post secondary education, what happens to the education of their populace? I'm worried if we tax their resources to the point where people aren't going to school, you're going to have a situation where you have a population of uneducated people in poor conditions who are more likely to turn into radicals that hate the West.
If they ARE trying to get nuclear tech for electricity purposes, that's cool. Turning it into bombs is not. There's been super rattling for sure, but ideally, I'd love to give them nuclear tech out of the goodness of my heart. Then, if they turn, then take it all away (militarily). Unfortunately, they'd probably be able to build something (if that was their intention) before we could re-intervene and take the tech/weapons away.
Right now, Israel will do the dirty work, I figure, as Iran works towards possible nuclear ambitions. This drone thing is just a way to show that they can defend themselves, and won't just be a limp-starfish to the world. I can say I'd do the same thing, you don't want to look like a pushover.
Honestly, I hope everything just gets resolved peacefully and without conflict, but I highly doubt that will happen.
However, the Alpha guy is not buying them anymore, and he's sold off a few. The demand isn't great for them, but if you just wanted it for you, you did fine.
-Matt
I'm not truly upset that you guys did buy all the Abysses, at least not as much as I was initially. I know you guys have a business to run for sure, it's just initially it seemed like a bit of a cash grab/stranglehold of the market supply. I know you guys probably do sell an amount of them, but you realize by increasing your prices on them (due to demand) and you guys buying up most of the available supply (at least on MKM), it's creating a jump for all the Abysses not only you have in stock, but the Abysses that you'll be getting and because you're a large retailer, other copies of the Abyss.
I'm not upset at SCG, since again, you guys do great work promoting Legacy and your customer service is fantastic, I just hate the fact that cards prices rise so quickly just because you guys need more stock. You know what I mean? It's just really frustrating that this gets out of control like this basically due to speculation that you guys are buying them up to horde them, even if that's not even the case.
Sorry if this came across as inflammatory or derogatory. It wasn't intended directly at you guys, just the market in general.
So apparently (from some sources, but I don't think there's official confirmation on this) SCG bought up all the copies on MKM re: the Abyss. That seems totally legitimate and not at all like manipulating the market, if that's what ended up happening.
The card isn't the greatest, and doesn't need to go up like this. It's sad to see when it does happen.
One of the biggest problems with Healthcare in countries where its socialized medicine (say Canada ect) is that there are to many people going to the doctor for the medical profession to keep up. Sitting in the emergency room to long and other such things.
I just wanted to address this for what it's worth, considering I'm a Canadian and have been through the healthcare system and am considering going into it.
If I got cancer, there's nowhere else I'd rather be besides Canada, or possibly some private clinic somewhere in the States if I literally had infinite money. British Columbia leads Canada in cancer research, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.
The main problem is that there's too many ill-informed people going to the doctor, and we don't have enough doctors. There's so many people at the clinics that are going due to colds and crap that they don't need to be there fore. In addition, Immigration over the last 40 years had led to a large population increase and the infrastructure hasn't kept up quite as fast. However, this is not to say you will not get treatment. You may have to wait a few months to see a specialist about a non-life-threatening condition, this is true, since they're busy people. But, if you have an issue that needs to be dealt with immediately, you will be in the hospital very soon.
If you're waiting for an MRI, you may wait 3 months if it's not critical. My grandmother was having issues, and got her MRI in a week. My father was having gall bladder problems and got referred to a specialist since it was urgent. Within the week, the specialist saw him, said the gall bladder needed to come out or it would rupture, and he was on the table in 3-5 days. It wasn't going to rupture that moment like an appendix, but it was an issue that would be pressing in the coming months, so they did it right away.
Yes, you do pay medical premiums. You do pay into the system, and you can pay more if you want to get a non-essential treatment done immediately at a private clinic. However, for my dad's operation, we didn't pay a single penny beyond the health care premiums, and my uncle hasn't paid a dime for his extensive cancer treatment over the past year.
Everyone pays in, the sick take out. Eventually, most people get sick and will need to use the system. Something strikes me that American isn't a huge fan of everyone paying in for something that involves everyone, unless it's the military.
For me, this is a local story, so it's being played a bunch on the news.
The long and the short of it is that apparently, some time ago, she made a mistake in some chatroom and showed her chest. This person then found out who she was, where she went to school, etc. and harassed the heck out of her. She moved from school to school, but eventually kids at the school found out about it, and bullied her constantly and with voracious intensity (including betas, etc.)
Eventually, she posted this video (a few days ago?) and then yesterday, she ended up taking her own life. Apparently the school board was aware of the bullying issues and was "working to resolve them." Obviously if the child is being beat up and harassed, and moves schools several times, something needs to be done not only about the kids at the schools harassing her, but also the person with this information.
I wish 4chan and Anonymous would find out who this person is who did the initial act of cyber bullying and out him/her, since this is ridiculous. If I was her father, oh man...
I'm probably going to go as Dallas from "Payday: The Heist." Mask is already bought, so now I've either got to buy a tweed jacket, or just not wear a suit jacket. I've got a tactical vest underneath, and I'll probably buy a cap pistol form the dollar store (since what I have right now would be too realistic to carry on the streets, you need the orange bumper on it).
I think this basically comes down to individualist versus collective sensibilities.
We've all heard the adage of billionaires pay less tax than their employees. I don't have facts and figures in front of me, but from the business owners I know (millionaires, not billionaires), this is true. 100% for certain, they pay little to no tax because the government lets them get away with it because they employ people.
Sure, people do work hard to start a business, build it, grow it, employ, etc. But, to get to the top, there can only be one owner/CEO/whatever that reaps the benefits of success. How often nowadays do employees directly benefit from the increasing success of the business they work at? Hardly. What's the incentive to have pride in your work when you get treated like a beast of burden, a facilitator of working man-hours?
If you increase taxes upon a company, up to a point, they will be paypable. Businesses are in business to make money, therefore they are making profit. No business runs on such a tight margin that some abrupt expenses, even if they can be a bit expensive, shut the entire place down. If you are, you don't stay around. Companies that do stay around for longer periods of time probably have more capital kicking around for unforeseen expenses. I'm sure that more business close in their first few years of business due to pitfalls like this than establish businesses do.
I've only known a few companies who treat their employees very well and share in the wealth and growth of the company, and like their workers. Most of the time, this is not the case.
This guy who sent out the memo is threatening these people that they should consider voting Republican, otherwise your welfare may be at stake with the company. It's not like this billionaire couldn't pay higher taxes, he just doesn't want to. It's easier to lay off employees and put the cash in his pocket. Most companies during the recession, even with extra capital kicking around (about 14% versus the regular 9%) are not hiring, since they're just keeping the capital around for either a rainy day, or just to profit more.
The guy is just being a rich jerk and using his position of wealth to try to be more wealthy. The main problem with the system is the tiered existence of the super rich and the working class. You said the workers can form unions to negotiate for better pay, but these get broken up or the jobs get outsourced if the costs are too high. What then? How is that problem getting solved when the companies just say it's too much and move on? Then how does that work?
The educational system seems to be a problem, as well as the electoral system. When you don't have a cap at how much you can spend on elections, how much you can give, etc. (I'm assuming this is how it is from what I've heard), then you're going to have a real problem with who controls the power dynamic in America. Who funds campaigns? Who chooses policy? Who decides the educational system? Why does the US hold a smaller proportion of the patents now than it did in the 1920's and 1930's? Sure, development has changed in different parts of the world sparking innovation, but perhaps education has changed enough that people are not encouraged to innovate and strive and think and create, but to work.
Individual card? Beta Black Lotus.
-Matt
Everything is either Summer, Beta, Old Bordered Korean, Russian, or German.
-Matt
Yes it does. If you do the math on it, there's more times you'd rather have the 61st bullet than not run it at all. Adrian Sullivan did an article on it if I recall.
1) The Dryad Arbor is there in case you get the GSZ hand with no DRS, as well as the surprise blocker or creature to hook equipment up to. I've won a good portion of games to having equipment open and fetching Arbor EOT to connect. It's also a surprise extra creature in blocking or against Liliana.
2) Lingering Souls was Doran actually for the past two months. Doran tested REALLY well in a Delver and DnT meta (because 1/1 TNN isn't that good, and neither are 1/1 flickerwisps, Thalias, and Revokers but buffing DRS, SFM, and Goyf is excellent). The problem? Miracles is on the rise so you need an attrition-based creature against Jace. Souls helps pressure Walkers as well as carry Equipment.
3) While both are good cards, they do different things. Confidant only allows you to draw one extra card per turn, and it's VERY powerful, but Sylvan can allow you to draw 2 extra cards in a single turn, or give you information about upcoming draws. Sylvan is powerful against Miracles as well, whereas Confidant, while powerful, dies to most of their removal. Overall, I like the 3/3 split but if I had an extra slot, I'd add the last confidant.
4) There is no replacing Goyf, sadly. If I were in your place, if I have 3-4 Goyf slots, I would run 2-3 Doran the Siege Tower and the last Confidant. Doran is very buff and well costed (5/5 for 3 mana), but isn't great against STP.
5) There's no Thalia in the main for obvious reasons (you play more spells than Maverick does), and none in the board since Thalia doesn't hate on Miracles enough. Meddling Mage stops STP and Teeg hangles the rest of their deck, from Humility, Terminus, Entreat, Jace, EE, etc. Mage is also an edge aaginst Sneak and Show and Punishing Jund.
As for KotR, there's a few problems with him, and it's why I didn't suggest him. I played Knight until TNN came out, and the problem is with DRS around as well, Knight cannot profitably attack (unless you're hooking up SOFI, in which case, God help your opponent) into a TNN, cannot usually buff up very much, and has no evasion. It doesn't fly, trample, or have protection. It does Wasteland, but who are you doing that to on Turn 4? Not Miracles. I think you could try him to replace Goyf, and maybe in your metagame he'll be fine. Most of the time, I've found the meta shift to push him a bit out of the forefront. I do love the card.
On contrast, I feel that if you build around Knight, it's a fine card. I think if you run the Depths package as a distinct deck, I think that strategy has merit. I just feel the value-Knight is worse than it used to be.
-Matt
Sideboard
-Matt
I placed second at StarCity Games. The list was pretty good all day. Are there any questions in particular about the list or certain matchups I could answer?
-Matt
Economic sanctions are breaking the Iranian's backs, and the dollar is going down the tubes. Inflation is rising, and income is dropping. With the Iranian oil sanctions on at the moment, how is Iran going to subsidize post secondary education?
The problem I see with the sanctions are as follows.
1) It makes Iran super desperate. This is not necessarily a good thing, but when you might start to have starving people, a flailing dollar, and no income, what have they got to lose?
2) If they can't afford to subsidize post secondary education, what happens to the education of their populace? I'm worried if we tax their resources to the point where people aren't going to school, you're going to have a situation where you have a population of uneducated people in poor conditions who are more likely to turn into radicals that hate the West.
If they ARE trying to get nuclear tech for electricity purposes, that's cool. Turning it into bombs is not. There's been super rattling for sure, but ideally, I'd love to give them nuclear tech out of the goodness of my heart. Then, if they turn, then take it all away (militarily). Unfortunately, they'd probably be able to build something (if that was their intention) before we could re-intervene and take the tech/weapons away.
Right now, Israel will do the dirty work, I figure, as Iran works towards possible nuclear ambitions. This drone thing is just a way to show that they can defend themselves, and won't just be a limp-starfish to the world. I can say I'd do the same thing, you don't want to look like a pushover.
Honestly, I hope everything just gets resolved peacefully and without conflict, but I highly doubt that will happen.
-Matt
-Matt
I'm not truly upset that you guys did buy all the Abysses, at least not as much as I was initially. I know you guys have a business to run for sure, it's just initially it seemed like a bit of a cash grab/stranglehold of the market supply. I know you guys probably do sell an amount of them, but you realize by increasing your prices on them (due to demand) and you guys buying up most of the available supply (at least on MKM), it's creating a jump for all the Abysses not only you have in stock, but the Abysses that you'll be getting and because you're a large retailer, other copies of the Abyss.
I'm not upset at SCG, since again, you guys do great work promoting Legacy and your customer service is fantastic, I just hate the fact that cards prices rise so quickly just because you guys need more stock. You know what I mean? It's just really frustrating that this gets out of control like this basically due to speculation that you guys are buying them up to horde them, even if that's not even the case.
Sorry if this came across as inflammatory or derogatory. It wasn't intended directly at you guys, just the market in general.
-Matt
The card isn't the greatest, and doesn't need to go up like this. It's sad to see when it does happen.
-Matt
-Matt
I just wanted to address this for what it's worth, considering I'm a Canadian and have been through the healthcare system and am considering going into it.
If I got cancer, there's nowhere else I'd rather be besides Canada, or possibly some private clinic somewhere in the States if I literally had infinite money. British Columbia leads Canada in cancer research, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.
The main problem is that there's too many ill-informed people going to the doctor, and we don't have enough doctors. There's so many people at the clinics that are going due to colds and crap that they don't need to be there fore. In addition, Immigration over the last 40 years had led to a large population increase and the infrastructure hasn't kept up quite as fast. However, this is not to say you will not get treatment. You may have to wait a few months to see a specialist about a non-life-threatening condition, this is true, since they're busy people. But, if you have an issue that needs to be dealt with immediately, you will be in the hospital very soon.
If you're waiting for an MRI, you may wait 3 months if it's not critical. My grandmother was having issues, and got her MRI in a week. My father was having gall bladder problems and got referred to a specialist since it was urgent. Within the week, the specialist saw him, said the gall bladder needed to come out or it would rupture, and he was on the table in 3-5 days. It wasn't going to rupture that moment like an appendix, but it was an issue that would be pressing in the coming months, so they did it right away.
Yes, you do pay medical premiums. You do pay into the system, and you can pay more if you want to get a non-essential treatment done immediately at a private clinic. However, for my dad's operation, we didn't pay a single penny beyond the health care premiums, and my uncle hasn't paid a dime for his extensive cancer treatment over the past year.
Everyone pays in, the sick take out. Eventually, most people get sick and will need to use the system. Something strikes me that American isn't a huge fan of everyone paying in for something that involves everyone, unless it's the military.
-Matt
The long and the short of it is that apparently, some time ago, she made a mistake in some chatroom and showed her chest. This person then found out who she was, where she went to school, etc. and harassed the heck out of her. She moved from school to school, but eventually kids at the school found out about it, and bullied her constantly and with voracious intensity (including betas, etc.)
Eventually, she posted this video (a few days ago?) and then yesterday, she ended up taking her own life. Apparently the school board was aware of the bullying issues and was "working to resolve them." Obviously if the child is being beat up and harassed, and moves schools several times, something needs to be done not only about the kids at the schools harassing her, but also the person with this information.
I wish 4chan and Anonymous would find out who this person is who did the initial act of cyber bullying and out him/her, since this is ridiculous. If I was her father, oh man...
-Matt
-Matt
We've all heard the adage of billionaires pay less tax than their employees. I don't have facts and figures in front of me, but from the business owners I know (millionaires, not billionaires), this is true. 100% for certain, they pay little to no tax because the government lets them get away with it because they employ people.
Sure, people do work hard to start a business, build it, grow it, employ, etc. But, to get to the top, there can only be one owner/CEO/whatever that reaps the benefits of success. How often nowadays do employees directly benefit from the increasing success of the business they work at? Hardly. What's the incentive to have pride in your work when you get treated like a beast of burden, a facilitator of working man-hours?
If you increase taxes upon a company, up to a point, they will be paypable. Businesses are in business to make money, therefore they are making profit. No business runs on such a tight margin that some abrupt expenses, even if they can be a bit expensive, shut the entire place down. If you are, you don't stay around. Companies that do stay around for longer periods of time probably have more capital kicking around for unforeseen expenses. I'm sure that more business close in their first few years of business due to pitfalls like this than establish businesses do.
I've only known a few companies who treat their employees very well and share in the wealth and growth of the company, and like their workers. Most of the time, this is not the case.
This guy who sent out the memo is threatening these people that they should consider voting Republican, otherwise your welfare may be at stake with the company. It's not like this billionaire couldn't pay higher taxes, he just doesn't want to. It's easier to lay off employees and put the cash in his pocket. Most companies during the recession, even with extra capital kicking around (about 14% versus the regular 9%) are not hiring, since they're just keeping the capital around for either a rainy day, or just to profit more.
The guy is just being a rich jerk and using his position of wealth to try to be more wealthy. The main problem with the system is the tiered existence of the super rich and the working class. You said the workers can form unions to negotiate for better pay, but these get broken up or the jobs get outsourced if the costs are too high. What then? How is that problem getting solved when the companies just say it's too much and move on? Then how does that work?
The educational system seems to be a problem, as well as the electoral system. When you don't have a cap at how much you can spend on elections, how much you can give, etc. (I'm assuming this is how it is from what I've heard), then you're going to have a real problem with who controls the power dynamic in America. Who funds campaigns? Who chooses policy? Who decides the educational system? Why does the US hold a smaller proportion of the patents now than it did in the 1920's and 1930's? Sure, development has changed in different parts of the world sparking innovation, but perhaps education has changed enough that people are not encouraged to innovate and strive and think and create, but to work.
My rant. Take it or leave it.
-Matt