MTG Salvation

if Wizards R&D are so concerned with making the game simple and accessible, why do they keep adding these keywords when a simple plain-english "This card has no color" will do? That way, new players don't have to learn extra unnecessary keywords.

Quote from ukyo_rulz »

I see, that clarifies things. I didn't realize that the damage from Polukranos worked differently from other "Fight" mechanics.

There is a specific ruling associated with the fight mechanic that causes creatures not to deal damage.

701.10b If a creature instructed to fight is no longer on the battlefield or is no longer a creature, no damage is dealt. If a creature is an illegal target for a resolving spell or ability that instructs it to fight, no damage is dealt.

Additionally, If a spell that says "target creature deals x damage", if the "target" is removed, it doesn't deal any damage. This has to do with that creature being an illegal target. This comes up with cards like Flesh // Blood

Not every color combination is going to be the strongest all the time. If you assume that every allied 1, 2, and 3 color combination rotates equally, then you'd expect UB to be the best every 15 seasons, and it was like 8 seasons ago where the faeries deck was the best.


I honestly don't get how people keep complaining about Blue and black getting shafted, especially after ravnica/theros standard where mono-blue and mono-black were at the top of the food chain, and where esper decks were viable.

You can buy them from ebay

And playing by the rules doesn't mean that new players won't continue to play, in fact, about half the new players I encounter don't even ask for a take-back when something like that happens. Playing without takebacks is not something that's unique to magic. Even new players grok it.

Quote from Teia Rabishu »

Are shouting matches standard behaviour at your LGS?

The word "Shouting match" is incredibly vague. It means nothing. If the girls were the only ones shouting except for when the spikes shouted "Judge", then one might still describe it as a shouting match.

My point was that even though what the spikes did was described as bad and unsportsmanlike-like, no actual allegation against them has been made.

Quote from waflz813 »

You would have to personaly know the players to understand how unreasonable it would have went down. I don't feel I need to go into great detail about it. Community comes before 1 pack to experianced players.

Since playing by the rules is the still the only allegation against them in this thread, my opinion that they did nothing wrong still stands. Vague "trust me, it was really bad" statements hold no water with me.

Here's what you have to do to solve the problem that you described

• Host some unsanctioned/casual events. That way, you haven't agreed to abide by a specific set of rules that Wizards has set up, and you can modify the rules to allow things like rewinding/takebacks
• Host events that don't have prizes for winning. That way, you'll be in better standing to encourage players to sometimes do things that harm their chances at winning, such as allowing rewinds and takebacks.

I.E. if you want players to play casually, then host casual events.

As far as I can see, you didn't describe anything specific that the spikes did wrong. There was this vague "shouting match", but that doesn't tell me much.

The person who was in the wrong is the judge. Technically, the judge shouldn't allow rewinds even if the spike team wants to rewind too. Allowing a rewind in that situation represents the judge looking the other way in the face of a minor rules violation. Encouraging the rewind, however, is quite un-judgelike

Quote from asmallcat »

Yes, the Mozilla guy should have resigned. Not only was he a bigot, he made public statements that led to his company getting a ton of negative press and people threatening to boycott. It was a dumb move for an executive to make. Replace gay marriage with interracial marriage. Now would we care if he was forced to step down? I think not.

Some people actually do want people to be able to voice their opinions without fear. If Brendan Eich made a comment saying that practicing religion should be banned, then many of the same people would still be defending him in the same way.

Further, you ARE making a ridiculous hypothetical slippery slope. One guy got banned for having been convicted of rape and there being press about it. This doesn't mean the next logical step is that the Wizards Gestapo is knocking on your door demanding to see your voter registration and entire history of opinions. Don't be absurd. And yes, obviously some positions SHOULD get you banned from magic. If you were a brazenly outspoken white supremacist, or Islamic terrorist supporter, or some other equally horrible thing, wizards could and should ban you. We may not be quite there yet with gay marriage, but we will be in 20 years, when (thankfully) expressing such a backward, bigoted viewpoint about equal protection under the law WILL be grounds for public mocking and being forced to resign. No one makes you be a bigot.

It's a slippery slope argument when you say that legalization of homosexuality will lead to christian priests being forced to perform the service at their weddings.
It's a slippery slope argument when people are saying that this will lead to background checks for magic players.

But it is not a slippery slope argument to say that when Wizards makes an executive decision to ban one person because he's undesirable, that they might make an executive decision to ban other people because they're undesirable.

Here's the state of the art: http://www.soniccenter.org/sm/mtg/megacombo.html

Fetch lands are used in mono-colored decks to control land drop percentages. A fetchland pulls 2 lands from the deck, so cracking fetches leads to less land drops, which means more gas.

Also, off-color fetches still produce 2 colors with battle lands, which means better fixing

It would be a completely different game pretty much.

The truth of it is, you are all worst than me because I have been playing longer than you. If you happen to win then you are just lucky.

Then if you happen to have been playing longer than me, you are worst than me because I am more in tune to how things are now than you are.


I think that should cover how you guys get lucky so often against me and beat me.

Quote from bioship_paladin »

This MTG investor's stock market is getting out of control, greedy ass stores are going to ruin this game.

And all these people defending the store is crazy, small minds think alike I guess.

LOL

Stores overcharging will not ruin the game. Online resellers will always undercut them and you can order cards from them wherever you are in the world. As long as online singles sellers exist, and as long as ebay exists, you will always be able to find a good deal. If you don't want to pay card store prices, stop buying singles from card stores.

I am guessing you feel the majority of pros and hall of fame players aren't good at magic?

Quote from Goblin Death DJ »

Do I think people who just netdeck and can't create good decks of their own are good magic players? No.

This is hilariously broad and uninformed. Well done.

I like cards like Stasis, I think they're funny and have character. I also used to love a lot of the old cartoony goblins. However I understand that a majority of players like realism, so it makes sense wizards is moving in that art direction.

Cool story bro.

While you're doing your analysis, do keep in mind that the data you're seeing in those census results reflects the measurement of an outcome variable which is averaged over a gigantic collection of people. The socioeconomic outcome variables for a typical human being depend on millions and millions of independent variables and confounding factors that influence that person's life trajectory.

The dastardly trick behind modern-day social science and the media's misuse thereof is getting you to use that outcome variable as a proxy for one particularly-selected independent variable that may or may not have significantly contributed to it. In the case of the gender wage gap, the trick is using the wage outcome as a proxy for a "systemic discrimination against women" variable.

So the real controversy regarding the gender wage gap (and indeed most other contentious issues in the social sciences) is not that the outcome variables are the way that they are, but why they are that way. If you want to engage with the issue of the gender wage gap in an interesting fashion, it's best to think of it as an argument between two competing hypotheses on either side of an excluded-middle dichotomy:

1) Discrimination hypothesis: The outcome gap between the genders is largely explained by specific gender discrimination.
2) Non-discrimination hypothesis: The outcome gap is largely explained by anything other than discrimination.

Note that anyone advocating the discrimination hypothesis carries a much heavier burden of proof than someone on the alternative. Someone on (1) is attempting to isolate one specific possibility among a huge space of possibilities, whereas explaining the gap in terms of any one of the other possibilities suffices for someone on (2). A good understanding of this logical principle is already enough to cut through a significant amount of gender-gap bull*****. Here are two examples of how this principle applies:

- Suppose someone is arguing for (1). They post a study (assume arguendo it's a soundly-conducted study, even though usually it won't be) showing that even after controlling for X, Y, and Z, a gender gap remains. Well, unless they've also shown that X, Y, and Z together cover every possible independent variable and confounder other than discrimination, they've given you only an epsilon worth of evidence for (1). Imagine by way of analogy that the prosecutor in a murder trial says that since the defendant wasn't at the coffee shop, grocery store, or haberdasher, he must have been at the victim's house committing the murder. That's what is happening here. Realistically about 90% of the studies on the gender wage gap fall in this category and can be dismissed on this basis.

- Suppose someone is arguing for (2). They post a study (again, assume arguendo it's sound, though usually it won't be) showing that after controlling for some variable X which is not discrimination, the gender wage gap narrows or reverses. Then (2) wins this debate. It's that simple. This is because the burden of proof for (2) is only to identify one non-discriminatory explanatory variable, whereas the burden of proof for (1) is to eliminate every such variable. (Practical debating note: Your opponent, if they are both smart enough to follow the logic this far and deeply invested in SJW ideology, will likely invite a further debate about X itself being explicable in terms of discrimination. For instance, if X is "hours spent at work" they'll say "well, the reason women spend fewer hours at work is because of rape culture" or something. It's up to you to decide whether this argument is worth having. Personally, if someone does this to me 3 or 4 times, I feel like I'm going to get stuck in an epistemic loop, like arguing with a fundamentalist about the origin of the universe. At that point I figure I'm dealing with a religious ideologue rather than a rationalist or scientist, and I just move on.)