- BetweenWalls
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Member for 12 years, 1 month, and 20 days
Last active Tue, Jan, 26 2021 22:12:40
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Nov 29, 2013BetweenWalls posted a message on All about the ProxiesIn my experience, a major reason people groan about proxies is because those proxies look terrible. (ie writing on a notecard) I think I'm fortunate to play with people who recognize that financial limitations can undermine gameplay, and mature enough to accept proxies, even if they don't particularly care for them. As a proponent of proxy use myself however, I try to always use color-printed ones. My gameplay experience suffers from boring black-and-white cut-outs, or the infinitely worse illegible-scrawl-on-basic-land style proxies.Posted in: Jaxck Blog
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Sep 20, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on Magic psychological profiles, and me.I've included some links in my house-ruling thread; here's the relevant info:Posted in: 1-800-cyanide line
Psychographic Profiles (Timmy, Johnny, Spike & Others)
Similarly to the idea of 'casual' gaming, many players are unaware of the specific types of motivation they and others have, or how that can help them. There are many explanations for how our brains work with regards to motivation, and that's because our brains are incredibly complicated. These 'psychographic' profiles, or archetypes, provide a visualization of the psychology behind the player.
Timmy enjoys the act of playing. (power, social, diversity, adrenaline)
Johnny wants to express something. (combo player, offbeat designer, deck artist, uber)
Spike wants to prove something. (tuner, innovator, analyst, nuts & bolts)
Bartle is another potential psycho-graphic profile that intersects the others (manipulator, achiever, explorer, socializer)
Vorthos judges cards on how they make him feel. (intuition)
Melvin judges cards on how they make him think. (sensing)
Timmy, Power Gamer is a really unfair stereotype of timmies. The links go into more detail, but it sounds like you could primarily be classified as a 'social gamer'. Unless you don't play the game for any of those 3 major reasons, (why do you play?) you'll probably fit in somewhere.
Vorthos & Melvin aren't actually psychographic profiles in the sense that the others are. They're based on what one cares about, not why they play.
I've been wanting to update this section of the thread, so I'm no reading about Bartle Types & Keirsay Temperaments, as well as MBTI classifications. It seems to me that in addition to the three primary player archetypes, (timmy, johnny, & spike) one more archetype is missing... and it'd be a mixture of johnny & either of the other 2. Still reading; this stuff is quite interesting. -
Sep 16, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on [Pauper][EDH] Colorless Insanity with Plague MyrPauper EDH rules disallow rares of any kind. In place of the regular requirement for a legendary commander, any non-rare creature is allowed. Finally, the other 99 cards must be common. All other rules are the same.Posted in: Magic Between Walls (Cube, EDH, Type 4, Pauper)
I'll add these rules to the post above. -
Sep 5, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on [152][Type 4][Budget] ╠ Stacked Between Walls ╣ Feedback WelcomeWow, that really is a stack! How do you keep yourselves from knocking it over?Posted in: Magic Between Walls (Cube, EDH, Type 4, Pauper)
Thanks for the list! Here's some info I gathered after scanning it.
Your list contains 2 Graceful Reprieve, 1 being in the blue section.
- Transcendant Master (Transcendent Master)
- Sakashima the Imposter (Sakashima the Impostor)
- Mikaeus the Unhallowed (Mikaeus, the Unhallowed)
- Sheltering Wind (Splintering Wind?)
- Tracker's Instinct (Tracker's Instincts)
- Crown of Ages (Crown of the Ages
- Miser's Cage (Misers' Cage)
- Platinum Empirion (Platinum Emperion)
- Forbidden Watchtower (Forbidding Watchtower)
- Slayer's Stronghold (Slayers' Stronghold)
- Aether Mutation
- Aeon Chronicler (maybe?)
- Agonizing Demise
- Altar of Shadows
- Angel of Salvation
- Angelic Arbiter
- Arbiter of Knollridge
- Argentum Armor
- Autochthon Wurm
- Backlash
- Bane of the Living
- Bant Charm
- Bituminous Blast
- Bloodfire Colossus
- Bosh, Iron Golem
- Call to the Grave
- Chancellor of the Dross
- Chromeshell Crab
- Conquering Manticore
- Counterlash
- Crib Swap
- Crime // Punishment
- Crosis's Charm
- Death by Dragons
- Death Mutation
- Desolation Giant
- Double Negative
- Dread Return
- Dromar's Charm
- Enlisted Wurm
- Esper Charm
- Faerie Trickery
- Feudkiller's Verdict
- Flowstone Slide
- Gravedigger
- Hateflayer
- Hindering Light
- Honden of Seeing Winds
- Hour of Reckoning
- Hoverguard Sweepers
- Jund Charm
- Killer Instinct
- Krosan Cloudscraper
- Leyline of Anticipation
- Lost in the Mist
- Lunar Mystic
- Lurking Predators
- Minion Reflector
- Mold Shambler
- Moonsilver Spear
- Mystifying Maze
- Naya Charm
- Orim's Thunder
- Parallectric Feedback
- Phyrexian Ingester
- Planar Cleansing
- Plated Slagwurm
- Prophetic Bolt
- Punish Ignorance
- Quicksilver Gargantuan
- Redirect
- Relic Crush
- Return to Dust
- Reverberate
- Rise from the Grave
- Rith's Charm
- Rush of Knowledge
- Savage Twister
- Soul Manipulation
- Soulscour
- Spell Crumple
- Sphinx of Lost Truths
- Spin into Myth
- Spinal Embrace
- Sudden Death
- Swift Silence
- Syphon Mind
- Tower of Calamities
- Treva's Charm
- Tyrant of Discord
- Unmake
- Vanishment
- Vengeful Rebirth
- Violent Ultimatum
- Voidmage Apprentice
- Voidmage Husher
- Voidmage Prodigy
- Volition Reins
- Wickerbough Elder
- Wild Ricochet
That leaves over 1600 cards that I either don't have or haven't considered. (I just copied all of the cards, ignoring whether you're using them currently or not) With these posts having a limit of 10,000 characters, I can't even come close to putting them here! It's going to take some time to look through them...- Annihilate
- Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- Archaeomancer
- Befoul
- Belfry Spirit
- Binding Grasp
- Blood Feud
- Boros Fury-Shield
- Brittle Effigy
- Cackling Counterpart
- Captain's Maneuver
- Cauldron Dance
- Cessation
- Chastise
- Cruel Revival
- Defender of Chaos
- Discombobulate
- Dismiss
- Divine Offering
- Dominate
- Dream Fracture
- Dregs of Sorrow
- Etched Oracle
- False Prophet
- Fervent Denial
- Flash Conscription
- Gallantry
- Gaze of Adamaro
- Heroes Remembered
- Hunting Pack
- Jiwari, the Earth Aflame
- Kalonian Behemoth
- Krosan Colossus
- Last Word
- Mage Slayer
- Metathran Aerostat
- Miraculous Recovery
- Molder
- Myojin of Seeing Winds
- Mystic Melting
- Necrotic Ooze
- Opportunity
- Overwhelming Intellect
- Pelakka Wurm
- Plague Boiler
- Prahv, Spires of Order
- Putrefy
- Quicksilver Dragon
- Rain of Thorns
- Ray of Distortion
- Refresh
- Reiterate
- Restrain
- Root Elemental
- Saltblast
- Searing Wind
- Shapesharer
- Shining Shoal
- Shivan Meteor
- Sickening Shoal
- Sorin's Vengeance
- Soul Foundry
- Spiritualize
- Stormscape Battlemage
- Suffocating Blast
- Summoning Trap
- Sunscour
- Symbiotic Wurm
- Syphon Flesh
- Take Possession
- Thalakos Seer
- Thicket Elemental
- Tidal Kraken
- Torrent of Souls
- Treacherous Urge
- Unburial Rites
- Urza's Factory
- Wall of Blossoms
- Winding Wurm
- Word of Seizing
- Yavimaya's Embrace
- Yore-Tiller Nephilim
We play without sleeves, so I've been avoiding the more expensive cards. I am considering making some proxies if I ever get access to a decent printer, but that ink is expensive anyway! - Transcendant Master (Transcendent Master)
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Aug 30, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on Raul, Zendikar TerramancerRaul's second ability seems like it should put the lands into your hand instead of into play. I can't imagine when I'd use his ultimate otherwise, as the first two are enough to consistently empty my hand of lands. I imagine he'd also be much better at a lower cost (and perhaps lower starting loyalty & lower + ability) because he'd be able to ramp you much earlier. What are you ramping into with a 6 mana Explore?Posted in: Raikou Rider Blog
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Aug 12, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on EDH, Degeneracy, & A New Ban List for Austere Play@ BitsyPosted in: Magic Between Walls (Cube, EDH, Type 4, Pauper)
The list wasn't intended to specifically be for 1v1 or multiplayer, much like the current 'official list'. I'm not sure that 1v1 has much with regards to politics, but, as EDH seems to be designed more so for social & multiplayer games, that's likely what this list is skewed toward. The watch list isn't something that necessarily need be on any player's radar, but is rather just there for myself and others interested in creating a ban list or house rule.
Your Rofellos example is an excellent one; As the game is now, many cards that could be too powerful in 1v1 have less of a chance of dominating a game in multiplayer due to the multiple players being able to 'gang-up' on the stronger player. This doesn't reduce the degeneracy of these powerful cards; It merely provides a safety net for them. This is not a good reason to have them banned in one game type but not the other. Barring circumstances especial to the number of players, if a card is overpowered in 1v1, it really shouldn't be played in multiplayer either, unless the goal is to provide the highest level of power possible without ruining the game.
Bribery is on the list above, under the tutoring section. You're absolutely correct about them varying based on your opponents' decks, but they do both still tutor a group of cards that your deck wouldn't otherwise even have access to. Creatures seemed like a more powerful target in general for 5 mana, which is why included one but not the other. I have a similar mindset regarding Blatant Thievery. It's one card that would have a variable effect based on the number of players, (so possibly banned in multiplayer but not in 1v1) but can often be very strong if the meta-game allows it. I'd definitely consider Insurrection before it though.
@Psycho5150
You might ask the same about the current list. Does your playgroup use that? By all means, continue with what you're doing if that's working for your playgroup. I've had fun in EDH without a banned list, with the official list, with house rules, without a few cards that some simply didn't want to play with at the time, and even without rares, or cards from the 'Top 50 list'. In this list, I'm attempting to create something that more closely resembles what EDH was originally about while keeping the number of banned cards to a minimum. -
May 6, 2012BetweenWalls posted a message on You know...Thanks for the intro, stranger. Glad you've found what you have.Posted in: Zephynoir Blog
Love,
Another stranger - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
- High Tide
- Strip Mine
- Mishra's Factory
- Hymn to Tourach
- Sinkhole
- Goblin Grenade
Another obvious contender currently is Peregrine DrakeAfter those, here are my picks:
- Delver of Secrets
- Rancor
- Ponder
- Preordain
- Gurmag Angler
- Flame Slash
- Chainer's Edict
- Young Wolf
- Galvanic Blast
Both Delver and Rancor are on record as being mistakes, each making it to production without recommended tweaks. Not to say that they should be banned, just that they're above what would normally be printed efficiency-wise. Ponder and Preordain are incredible consistency pieces which are a major reason blue is as ever-present as it is, and are banned in other formats for that reason. Being enablers (rather than active pieces) makes them feel less oppressive than they are. The other 5 all follow the same pattern - extreme mana efficiency with meaningful impact, though I'm less certain I didn't overlook something that could fit better.I'm mostly ignoring sideboard cards here, since they're often either overpowered or underpowered based on the matchup. These I think would break into the 'power' group if their bad matchups aren't considered, since they can be such blowouts:
I think it would be great to have optimally balanced packs, but you can't have a static list, or people will begin to memorize where certain cards are. Or is that part appealing to you? I'm envisioning a set of algorithms that can generate packs according to your preferences - perhaps you want at least 1.5 cards of each color per pack, or you want specific combo pieces to be in separate packs, or certain cards to appear earlier or later in the draft. You could also balance the relative power of packs, or even ensure that the most powerful cards are more consistently distributed (first-pick opportunities) between all players.
It would certainly take longer to setup, but if that's something that's desirable, (and some randomization is still wanted) the program could actually use a 'blind' system to allow even a single person to organize it without knowing how the cards are distributed.
Honestly, I responded in this thread on a whim, so it now occurs to me that this may just be an issue of semantics - since the word 'redirect' has mtg-specific meaning as rules text, it may be incorrectly implying that damage in this context is redirected in the same way. I don't know enough about the rule in question to say if that's the case or not. I do know that the rule, as it was explained to me, was odd because it required the player as an intermediary target of sorts when directing a damage spell at a planeswalker. That's the inelegant part.
EDIT: So, perhaps there are problems with a rule that would only apply to damaging spells/abilities that target players, now being able to target planeswalkers. Anathemancer? Damage could be applied directly to the player, but the second part would look at the controller of the planeswalker. If the same effect (if the spell/ability deals damage, it targets the planeswalker. if not, it looks to the planeswalker's controller) was applied everywhere, would anything break?
This is of course in the context of targeting planeswalkers, so rather than all the rules for redirecting damage, a number of clarifying points or restrictions would be needed for things that wouldn't make any sense. (so... if the spell would try to do something impossible like give a planeswalker life - Rest for the Weary - then it either can't target that planeswalker, or it has no effect) Essentially, this is only an issue for spells that deal damage to players (and are currently redirected), so any other spells shouldn't be involved, ideally. The current redirection solution is so inelegant, I don't imagine it would be all that difficult to come up with something more direct and intuitive.
As for MBC vs Affinity, perhaps Ostracize would be another option? Works well against other decks too if you need a bit of extra hate.
3 Dimir Infiltrator
4 Dripping-Tongue Zubera
4 Elder Pine of Jukai
2 Floating-Dream Zubera
1 Ivy Lane Denizen
1 Safehold Elite
2 Thief of Hope
4 Verdant Eidolon
4 Wirewood Herald
Spells (15)
4 Ashnod's Altar
4 Brainstorm
1 Nameless Inversion
3 Tortured Existence
3 Unearth
2 Dismal Backwater
2 Evolving Wilds
5 Forest
3 Island
3 Jungle Hollow
4 Swamp
1 Thornwood Falls
1 Blood Celebrant
1 Bog Initiate
1 Cruel Deceiver
1 Death Denied
1 Deathknell Kami
1 Disowned Ancestor
1 Dizzy Spell
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Essence Warden
1 Fangren Marauder
1 Feldon's Cane
1 Fierce Empath
1 Hana Kami
1 Mortus Strider
1 Nomadic Elf
1 Promised Kannushi
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
1 Soulless Revival
1 Viscera Seer
1 Wild Cantor
As you can see, it's a little messy, and the sideboard is just a maybeboard at this point. Verdant Eidolon hasn't worked as well as I hoped for a mana filterer (you need 2+ of them), but it has nice synergy otherwise and gets the job done if the game goes long enough. I'm hopeful that the overall synergy might be high enough that it'll just be resilient enough to make that happen. If not, perhaps using all the extra colorless mana from the Altar on something big would do the trick. Regardless, I thought it was interesting and wanted to share. Feedback is welcome, of course!
I'm curious if it would be too powerful - it's hard to say without any actual data, as all the Ashnod's Altar combos I'm thinking of require a non-common card. I did a little research and found these pauper combos for it:
Ashnod's Altar combos:
Pili-Pala + Presence of Gond = infinite mana of any color(s)
Antler Skulkin + Phantom Nomad = infinite ETB/LTB triggers
Cathodion + Bog Initiate + Tortured Existence + Sanitarium Skeleton = BB: durdle (1 ETB/LTB trigger)
... + Disciple of the Vault = opponent loses 1 life per iteration
... + Deathgreeter = gain 1 life per iteration
I was hoping there might be more combos with Cathodion, but returning it from the graveyard seems to be a bottleneck mana-wise. That said, there may be enough value without going infinite to make for a successful deck - Unearth, Driver of the Dead, Blisterpod, Leonin Squire, Flayer Husk, Safehold Elite, and Bond Beetle seem like they might work together in some combination to quickly generate a lot of mana.
It's hard to say how this list would do though - I'm guessing many of the typical Commander staples aren't legal if everyone's using a 2DH deck. Wrath effects are probably less common and/or worse, so Dralnu may not have as much to fear there. I may end up building it and trying it out sometime... is there a discussion hub somewhere for this variant? I've found some lists but there isn't much out there, it seems.
Personally, I am a visual learner and visual rememberer, so the art is helpful for identifying cards more quickly and reducing repeated reading. I suppose that's the same for everyone - perhaps just moreso for me. Of course, others may not feel it's that important. It is nice to have options rather than the (frankly) disappointing checklist cards Wizards gives us, and I'm happy to contribute toward that. Speaking of which, I've updated my post with the DFCs from Eldritch Moon. Pleasant cubing, folks.
Otherworldly Outburst seems really efficient