I think Maga beats out Zur as the best general. Zur could still be dealt with, and needs to actually get in combat to power out ridiculous enchantments. We've had numerous people showing up with Zur decks (and most of them run broken enchantments), and we haven't found them to be that much of a problem, but the one guy with Maga, we actually need to team up to take him out first, or else he totally dominates the game.
With Maga, you don't even care when he dies, since he'll just drain someone for more. Between all the artifact land searchers and cards like Cabal Coffers, Magus of the Coffers, Extraplanar Lens, Bubbling Muck, etc, etc, Maga-ing someone for 15+ isn't even hard to do. And the thing is, they absolutely HAVE to deal with the Maga, or else you just keep swinging with him and he can kill via general combat damage. But if you deal with him, he just comes back bigger! We haven't even taken into account the rest of the deck yet!
So yeah, Maga has to be on that list of most powerful generals.
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I'm seeing a lot of votes for Jhoira, but I think she suffers from the same problem. Giving people 4 turns to prepare for that obliterate or decree of annihilation is waaay too long, and nothing else is potent enough to be worth suspending instead of building the mana and hardcasting it.
Thats why you run cards that speed up the timer, Fury Charm, Clockspinning etc... So suddenly that Obliterate goes off 3 turns faster and the Darksteel Colossus you suspended with it comes in soon after to start smashing face.
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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin & Hobbes
But if you don't have those cards....you get ganked on by other people, particularly when you are suspending: Obliterate, Time Stretch or Blatant Thievery.
Even worse is when you suspend them in a row.
The other problem with Jhoira is that your deck will often be choke full of high mana costed cards. Most often way I've seen Jhoira deck loses is when people immediately shift their attention to you when you suspend, let's say, Decree of Annihilation. One player will kill Jhoira continuously, while the others may or may not alpha strike you over and over. Sure, you speed up the suspend, it resolves, but after it resolves, your Jhoira will now costs like 7 or 9 mana to cast again, and the board is clean, except now you are sitting there with a handful of expensive spells or cards that spin down suspend counters, neither of which will handle the first couple of creatures or fast generals like Zur on the board. That's the only real flaw in a Jhoira deck, the dependency on Jhoira to resolve your most expensive spells (U/R has to be the worst colour combination to be in if you want to accelerate your mana).
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I think Maga beats out Zur as the best general. Zur could still be dealt with, and needs to actually get in combat to power out ridiculous enchantments. We've had numerous people showing up with Zur decks (and most of them run broken enchantments), and we haven't found them to be that much of a problem, but the one guy with Maga, we actually need to team up to take him out first, or else he totally dominates the game.
With Maga, you don't even care when he dies, since he'll just drain someone for more. Between all the artifact land searchers and cards like Cabal Coffers, Magus of the Coffers, Extraplanar Lens, Bubbling Muck, etc, etc, Maga-ing someone for 15+ isn't even hard to do. And the thing is, they absolutely HAVE to deal with the Maga, or else you just keep swinging with him and he can kill via general combat damage. But if you deal with him, he just comes back bigger! We haven't even taken into account the rest of the deck yet!
So yeah, Maga has to be on that list of most powerful generals.
mmhh, maybe one-on-one Maga is great, but I have my doubts about Maga for multiplayer, it's why I never really considered him, because our group only plays that format.
First, a Maga deck is monoblack, so it will have a difficult time dealing with any number of EDH staples.
Second, everybody starts at 40 life, it's not like Maga is going to kill opponents that quickly, before anyone realizes it and gangs up, as you said. That doesn't even factor in quite a few lifegain strategies out there.
Now I don't want to get into a heated argument, but I would think that a Zur EDH deck would eat a Maga EDH deck for breakfast, even one-on-one. Typical Zur opening: turn 3 Zur (with any number of accelerators), turn 4 Diplomatic Immunity, turn 5 Daybreak Coronet, turn 6 Empyrial Armor, etc, all with counter backup... Maybe the Zur decks you saw weren't playing it this way?
The amount of disruption a Maga deck could play is somewhat minimal and remember this is a highlander format, so a bit luck-based: Damnation, Sudden Death, Tendrils of Corruption (with 4 swamps in play) on turn 4, after that it's almost game over, as a Zur deck usually has a tutorable answer for just about any problems.
Of course I'm not all that experienced facing a Maga deck or playing with one, so prove me wrong...
Primary and only casual rule: "any rule that is fine for the most part of the playgroup, is a fine rule". So any further thread with: "if somebody uses/does .... in a casual game, is it ethical/ok?", read the answer above.
- Being a "Johnny/Spike" means you like self-torture. You win often in casual, so everybody hates you; you loose often in competitive, so you hate yourself.
I've seen a few Zur decks. The best multiplayer one that I saw breaks open multiplayer with Limited Resources, Attunement/Replenish/Opalescence/etc (the whole replenish deck setup), Recurring Nightmare (before it got banned), Rule of Law, Sacred Mesa and other crazy multiplayer enchantments and could take on multiple people out at the same time with insane recursion. It even has the ability to go infinite. He did take that part out later, since we would kill him ASAP if he tried to go the combo parts.
Against MBC, you need to have mana up for counterspells the turn you resolve Zur or else MBC will kill Zur as soon as it gets casted. All MBC sacrifice spells, plus stuff like Bane of the Living/Kagemaro spells that gives -X/-X can easily take down Zur before you get your pumps (Zur is almost forced to go for the protection first, or else, it becomes even more susceptible to MBC removal). Artifact removal like O-Stone/Disk are also staples in MBC that untargetability can't protect Zur from. All MBC needs to do is to force Zur to cost about 8 or more before they start to play Maga over and over again. When your win condition (Zur) costs that much, AND you need counterspell to make sure he doesn't die to MBC's entire deck (Maga MBC runs pretty much all kill spells and acceleration, since the win-con is Maga), then you are usually on enough of a tightrope such that Maga can easily clean up.
1 on 1 Zur has an inherent disadvantage against Maga decks, because 1 on 1 Zur decks are built around Zur, a creature. While MBC decks are built around killing creature and pumping mana to finish with Maga. Zur decks have to dedicate many slots to aura spells, spells that are not that good when Zur isn't around. That's the inherent disadvantage. If Maga went against something like Jhoira, then it would have a tough time, since with 5 mana (cast Jhoira, retain priority), you can resolve something ridiculous like Obliterate that obliterates (hehe) MBC's entire plan: ramp mana. But Zur decks just don't do well against Maga decks in general.
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Hah yes, forgot about those, I have never faced monoblack with my Zur deck but I remember I had some difficulty with Savra because of her Gravepact-like ability.
That said, my Zur deck runs about 22 creatures and also runs Limited Resources, Armaggedon and Catastrophe, So it would be closer than you think. It would be an interesting matchup...
Primary and only casual rule: "any rule that is fine for the most part of the playgroup, is a fine rule". So any further thread with: "if somebody uses/does .... in a casual game, is it ethical/ok?", read the answer above.
- Being a "Johnny/Spike" means you like self-torture. You win often in casual, so everybody hates you; you loose often in competitive, so you hate yourself.
what about old school generals? it seems to me that everyone is pretty obcessed with the type 2 + rav block generals....lets go back.....waay back to some fun oldschool stuff
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whats the deal with memnarch and bosh? do they count as Uand Rrespectively?
As far as I know, all artifact deck. No colors. But that makes it pretty screwy since you can't technicaly ever produce the colors for their abilities then. So depending who you play with they may be flexible on the rules and for instance let your lands produce U for Memnarch for example.
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"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin & Hobbes
whats the deal with memnarch and bosh? do they count as Uand Rrespectively?
No, they're still colorless, and allow only colorless cards. I feel that that rule will change soon, though, as it seems like majority opinion favors their availability as generals. Even so, it seems like there's a strong belief that Memnarch would need to be banned as a general anyway if this rule were to be changed. Many groups also ignore this rule.
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Powerful EDH generals...personally, I think Rith, the Awakener would be an amusing choice to run, although I'm accustomed to people running 1- or 2-color decks in EDH, so make of that what you will. Scion is great as long as you can support the manabase (i.e., no 'budget' builds). I really like Intet, the Dreamer and, after hearing about it, Maga, Traitor to Mortals.
Post-Morningtide, if it came to a Zur deck facing a Maga deck, why wouldn't you search:
~Diplomatic Immunity
~Declaration of Naught (naming Maga)
~Innumerable pump enchantments FTW
If the above posts were true and that deck only runs Maga as a win condition, that would really be game for them. They could always stop you from winning, but they themselves wouldn't be able to win as long as you had U up.
I have no problems with cursing. I always feel like the sort of people who buy that cliche are the same ones who think that every bully is secretly insecure. Life isn't as simple as our kindergarten teachers taught us.
That would be a wicked setup for Zur, except different groups play with different rules. Stuff like Riftsweeper, Control Magic effect, and Meddling Mage effects are all given "erratas" when it comes to dealing with generals. This way, it prevent stuff like Karakas from being abused and stuff like that.
Though some groups choose to play with the cards as printed, but it makes for some weird games when you can recur Riftsweeper and nobody gets their general, ever.
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yeah, like the guy who showed up with Proteus Staff just so he could be the only one with a general.
If I would play Zur with Declaration of Naught, I don't think I would be naming the other player's general; it kinda ruins the point of playing EDH in the first place...
Primary and only casual rule: "any rule that is fine for the most part of the playgroup, is a fine rule". So any further thread with: "if somebody uses/does .... in a casual game, is it ethical/ok?", read the answer above.
- Being a "Johnny/Spike" means you like self-torture. You win often in casual, so everybody hates you; you loose often in competitive, so you hate yourself.
Personally I think that Zur should definately be on there. I play a Zur deck very similar to fdtori and since I've got it tweaked just right it never loses.
If anyone likes I could post my decklist. Like I said, it's almost exactly like fdtori's but with a few changes that fit my playstyle.
I don't really know how he rates on the power scale, but my pet project for EDH right now is a Vaevictis Asmadi deck. It runs 20+ land fetch spells, plenty of "# of lands/forests/mountains/swamps" creatures/spells/etc., and Vores. Lots of Vores. I haven't really finished the decklist, or I'd post it. But the concept is simple. Let's get LOTS of lands into play, drop insane P/T creatures, and commence beatdowns. It has mass removal, targetted removal, and LOTS of annoyance.
I have actually never gotten to PLAY EDH yet. I never have time to play Magic PERIOD, with my work schedule. But at all hours of the night I come up with new deck ideas.
I also am planning on doing a Legendary Creature search on Gatherer (which I have not done yet) to get ideas for some old-school legends - preferably multi-color.
But that's just my three cents. Make of it what you will.
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yeah, like the guy who showed up with Proteus Staff just so he could be the only one with a general.
If I would play Zur with Declaration of Naught, I don't think I would be naming the other player's general; it kinda ruins the point of playing EDH in the first place...
I'm trying to get a deck going that uses the staff with Wydwen, the Biting Gale. UB general means all kinds of draw and tutor, and Wydwen provides a great reusable staff target.
That would be a wicked setup for Zur, except different groups play with different rules. Stuff like Riftsweeper, Control Magic effect, and Meddling Mage effects are all given "erratas" when it comes to dealing with generals. This way, it prevent stuff like Karakas from being abused and stuff like that.
Though some groups choose to play with the cards as printed, but it makes for some weird games when you can recur Riftsweeper and nobody gets their general, ever.
People have errataed Control Magic effects? Why? I think you should be able to build a deck that isn't just 'random theme supported by random legend'.dec. If you need to errata Control Magic so that you're able to play games of EDH, then you should probably try building a better deck.
Yeah, if someone wants to be irritating like that, it can be annoying. But why are you playing with them, if it becomes such a problem? (Also, how are they going to win if they're spending all of their effort on insuring that everyone at the table is their enemy?)
I have no problems with cursing. I always feel like the sort of people who buy that cliche are the same ones who think that every bully is secretly insecure. Life isn't as simple as our kindergarten teachers taught us.
Control Magic effect is just way too powerful when targeting generals. I believe this is the conclusion reached by the majority of EDH players (at least people on the "official" EDH board seems to think so).
Something like Blatant Thievery, normally just a very good card, becomes ridiculous and totally approaching ban worthy if you let it take every other player's generals permanently. Control magic effects are also fairly easy to recur, particularly stuff like Gilded Drake, that it becomes ridiculously easy to just take everyone else's general and never give them back. This results in degenerate game states, and thus, Control Magic effects were errataed to not affect generals.
Also, most strategies revolving around a singular general will get hosed easily with Control Magic effects. Zur? Maga? Jhoira? All of these generals requires a deck to be built around them, and a singular control magic can undo their entire deck. Without the errata, the rules favour decks that never cast their general, but just use the general as the colour control. This completely defeats the purpose of EDH, and that's why it had to be errataed.
If you don't believe me, try it out next time. Make a mono blue deck with Teferi as your general. Now cram it with as many control magic effect as possible. Treachery, Confiscate, Take Possession, etc, etc. You can easily win multiple games, since you don't need any win conditions other than your opponent's generals. It becomes just a bit unbalanced.
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If you don't believe me, try it out next time. Make a mono blue deck with Teferi as your general. Now cram it with as many control magic effect as possible. Treachery, Confiscate, Take Possession, etc, etc. You can easily win multiple games, since you don't need any win conditions other than your opponent's generals. It becomes just a bit unbalanced.
To be fair, the person who I play EDH with most these days uses a deck that does almost exactly this, except it uses Empress Galina (who we let target generals). It's annoying, but it's hardly an unstoppable force. If people are really bothered by this, they can pick up real ultimate tech like Despotic Scepter.
I guess I just don't see a huge difference between General theft and normal creature theft. Perhaps I am simply inexperienced with the matter.
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I run a Claws of Gix in my deck just for situations like that... I would prolly throw in a Despotic Scepter too. The stealing of Generals should be allowed, its just like any other game function.
With Maga, you don't even care when he dies, since he'll just drain someone for more. Between all the artifact land searchers and cards like Cabal Coffers, Magus of the Coffers, Extraplanar Lens, Bubbling Muck, etc, etc, Maga-ing someone for 15+ isn't even hard to do. And the thing is, they absolutely HAVE to deal with the Maga, or else you just keep swinging with him and he can kill via general combat damage. But if you deal with him, he just comes back bigger! We haven't even taken into account the rest of the deck yet!
So yeah, Maga has to be on that list of most powerful generals.
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Thats why you run cards that speed up the timer, Fury Charm, Clockspinning etc... So suddenly that Obliterate goes off 3 turns faster and the Darksteel Colossus you suspended with it comes in soon after to start smashing face.
Even worse is when you suspend them in a row.
The other problem with Jhoira is that your deck will often be choke full of high mana costed cards. Most often way I've seen Jhoira deck loses is when people immediately shift their attention to you when you suspend, let's say, Decree of Annihilation. One player will kill Jhoira continuously, while the others may or may not alpha strike you over and over. Sure, you speed up the suspend, it resolves, but after it resolves, your Jhoira will now costs like 7 or 9 mana to cast again, and the board is clean, except now you are sitting there with a handful of expensive spells or cards that spin down suspend counters, neither of which will handle the first couple of creatures or fast generals like Zur on the board. That's the only real flaw in a Jhoira deck, the dependency on Jhoira to resolve your most expensive spells (U/R has to be the worst colour combination to be in if you want to accelerate your mana).
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mmhh, maybe one-on-one Maga is great, but I have my doubts about Maga for multiplayer, it's why I never really considered him, because our group only plays that format.
First, a Maga deck is monoblack, so it will have a difficult time dealing with any number of EDH staples.
Second, everybody starts at 40 life, it's not like Maga is going to kill opponents that quickly, before anyone realizes it and gangs up, as you said. That doesn't even factor in quite a few lifegain strategies out there.
Now I don't want to get into a heated argument, but I would think that a Zur EDH deck would eat a Maga EDH deck for breakfast, even one-on-one. Typical Zur opening: turn 3 Zur (with any number of accelerators), turn 4 Diplomatic Immunity, turn 5 Daybreak Coronet, turn 6 Empyrial Armor, etc, all with counter backup... Maybe the Zur decks you saw weren't playing it this way?
The amount of disruption a Maga deck could play is somewhat minimal and remember this is a highlander format, so a bit luck-based: Damnation, Sudden Death, Tendrils of Corruption (with 4 swamps in play) on turn 4, after that it's almost game over, as a Zur deck usually has a tutorable answer for just about any problems.
Of course I'm not all that experienced facing a Maga deck or playing with one, so prove me wrong...
Best 1 on 1 Zur I've seen was the basic setup you said, except it went: Flickerform, Diplomatic Immunity and then the pumps. Flickerform is almost a must have against MBC, without that, Zur is doomed against multiple Innocent Blood/Barter in Blood/Diabolic Edict effects that MBC runs.
Against MBC, you need to have mana up for counterspells the turn you resolve Zur or else MBC will kill Zur as soon as it gets casted. All MBC sacrifice spells, plus stuff like Bane of the Living/Kagemaro spells that gives -X/-X can easily take down Zur before you get your pumps (Zur is almost forced to go for the protection first, or else, it becomes even more susceptible to MBC removal). Artifact removal like O-Stone/Disk are also staples in MBC that untargetability can't protect Zur from. All MBC needs to do is to force Zur to cost about 8 or more before they start to play Maga over and over again. When your win condition (Zur) costs that much, AND you need counterspell to make sure he doesn't die to MBC's entire deck (Maga MBC runs pretty much all kill spells and acceleration, since the win-con is Maga), then you are usually on enough of a tightrope such that Maga can easily clean up.
1 on 1 Zur has an inherent disadvantage against Maga decks, because 1 on 1 Zur decks are built around Zur, a creature. While MBC decks are built around killing creature and pumping mana to finish with Maga. Zur decks have to dedicate many slots to aura spells, spells that are not that good when Zur isn't around. That's the inherent disadvantage. If Maga went against something like Jhoira, then it would have a tough time, since with 5 mana (cast Jhoira, retain priority), you can resolve something ridiculous like Obliterate that obliterates (hehe) MBC's entire plan: ramp mana. But Zur decks just don't do well against Maga decks in general.
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Hah yes, forgot about those, I have never faced monoblack with my Zur deck but I remember I had some difficulty with Savra because of her Gravepact-like ability.
That said, my Zur deck runs about 22 creatures and also runs Limited Resources, Armaggedon and Catastrophe, So it would be closer than you think. It would be an interesting matchup...
i love Rasputin dreamweaver, halfdane and Hazazon tamar for generals.....anyone else
Lots of tricks you can do with him (blink, Blasting Station, etc)
I could also see some potential for crazy tricks if you use Darien, King of Kjeldor as your general.
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Some strong generals I don't think I've seen mentioned yet -
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Numot, the Devastator, Bladewing the Risen, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, Memnarch, Kaervek the Merciless
As far as I know, all artifact deck. No colors. But that makes it pretty screwy since you can't technicaly ever produce the colors for their abilities then. So depending who you play with they may be flexible on the rules and for instance let your lands produce U for Memnarch for example.
No, they're still colorless, and allow only colorless cards. I feel that that rule will change soon, though, as it seems like majority opinion favors their availability as generals. Even so, it seems like there's a strong belief that Memnarch would need to be banned as a general anyway if this rule were to be changed. Many groups also ignore this rule.
Yodafan: Official pro of one of Magic’s most casual formats.
Post-Morningtide, if it came to a Zur deck facing a Maga deck, why wouldn't you search:
~Diplomatic Immunity
~Declaration of Naught (naming Maga)
~Innumerable pump enchantments FTW
If the above posts were true and that deck only runs Maga as a win condition, that would really be game for them. They could always stop you from winning, but they themselves wouldn't be able to win as long as you had U up.
Though some groups choose to play with the cards as printed, but it makes for some weird games when you can recur Riftsweeper and nobody gets their general, ever.
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If I would play Zur with Declaration of Naught, I don't think I would be naming the other player's general; it kinda ruins the point of playing EDH in the first place...
If anyone likes I could post my decklist. Like I said, it's almost exactly like fdtori's but with a few changes that fit my playstyle.
I have actually never gotten to PLAY EDH yet. I never have time to play Magic PERIOD, with my work schedule. But at all hours of the night I come up with new deck ideas.
Other Generals I have made decklists for include:
Stonebrow, Krosan Hero - Trample deck
Kangee, Aerie Keeper - Bird deck
Scion of the Ur-Dragon - Dragon deck
Rith, the Awakener - Saproling/Fungus deck
Other Generals I am working on decklists for include:
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV - Cost Reduction deck
Patron of the Akki - Goblin deck
Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro - Shaman deck
Captain Sisay - Legendary deck
Atogatog - Licid/Atog deck
I also am planning on doing a Legendary Creature search on Gatherer (which I have not done yet) to get ideas for some old-school legends - preferably multi-color.
But that's just my three cents. Make of it what you will.
Zur the Enchanter
Jhoira of the Ghitu
Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
Scion of the Ur-Dragon
Konda, Lord of Eiganjo
Current EDH Decks:
G Multani, Maro-Sorcerer
B Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
GU Momir Vig, Simic Visionary
I'm trying to get a deck going that uses the staff with Wydwen, the Biting Gale. UB general means all kinds of draw and tutor, and Wydwen provides a great reusable staff target.
People have errataed Control Magic effects? Why? I think you should be able to build a deck that isn't just 'random theme supported by random legend'.dec. If you need to errata Control Magic so that you're able to play games of EDH, then you should probably try building a better deck.
Yeah, if someone wants to be irritating like that, it can be annoying. But why are you playing with them, if it becomes such a problem? (Also, how are they going to win if they're spending all of their effort on insuring that everyone at the table is their enemy?)
Something like Blatant Thievery, normally just a very good card, becomes ridiculous and totally approaching ban worthy if you let it take every other player's generals permanently. Control magic effects are also fairly easy to recur, particularly stuff like Gilded Drake, that it becomes ridiculously easy to just take everyone else's general and never give them back. This results in degenerate game states, and thus, Control Magic effects were errataed to not affect generals.
Also, most strategies revolving around a singular general will get hosed easily with Control Magic effects. Zur? Maga? Jhoira? All of these generals requires a deck to be built around them, and a singular control magic can undo their entire deck. Without the errata, the rules favour decks that never cast their general, but just use the general as the colour control. This completely defeats the purpose of EDH, and that's why it had to be errataed.
If you don't believe me, try it out next time. Make a mono blue deck with Teferi as your general. Now cram it with as many control magic effect as possible. Treachery, Confiscate, Take Possession, etc, etc. You can easily win multiple games, since you don't need any win conditions other than your opponent's generals. It becomes just a bit unbalanced.
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To be fair, the person who I play EDH with most these days uses a deck that does almost exactly this, except it uses Empress Galina (who we let target generals). It's annoying, but it's hardly an unstoppable force. If people are really bothered by this, they can pick up real ultimate tech like Despotic Scepter.
I guess I just don't see a huge difference between General theft and normal creature theft. Perhaps I am simply inexperienced with the matter.
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