MTG Salvation

Quote from Tiax »

Quote from BurningPaladin »

Quote from A Guy Who Might Post »

It is kind of terrible how much sympathy a rich white rapist can get. It does not do much to give me faith in the mtg community.

And here we see the nature of the beast, why should it matter his race or economic status?

I think what the poster is saying is that it shouldn't matter, and yet it seems unlikely that someone who could not afford a high-priced lawyer would have received such a generous plea bargain, and the differences in racial sentencing are well-known.

The victim told the prosecutor to not bury him in jail time. All this other stuff is insanely off topic.

Where's the heroin thing coming from? Nothing I've found says Chapin sold Heroin, just Ecstasy... alot of ecstasy.

Quote from Grant »

...playing against him on MTGO should be fairly safe.

He's not going to grab you through your monitor.

This set in general seems like a sleeper. So many cards seeing play in various formats.

Top 10 for Unpowered Cube
(aka, what Im going to jam in my cube)

Going in:

1. Narset, Enlightened Master - The current USA legendaries are a bit awkward for commander. Giving opponents stuff and LD isn't something that my cube is built around. This is a perfect build around card. Been looking forward to this. Should be very powerful too given the cube's power level.

2. Bloodsoaked Champion - Supports Blaggro and sac type things. Going to be a perfect addition.

3. Ankle Shanker - Seems too awesome not to put in.

4. Mindswipe - Too awesome, going in. Fits UR perfectly.

Going in for testing

3. Empty the Pits - Self-mill is already supported through Life from the Loam/ a few other dredge cards so this will probably fit well.

4. Clever Impersonator - Way too flexible not to include. I love my clones and have too many, so Im not sure if this will make the cut after we play with it a few times.

5. Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker - Might be hitting too close to Koth. Need to test.

Testing... but We'll See

6. Savage Knuckleblade - Looks fun.

7. Herald of Anafenza - I have a token theme. This seems very playable. Might be a bit off here.

8. Retribution of the Ancients - Ton of +1/+1 counters floating around in my cube. Will have to eyeball this. Attrition has been strong. This might just be powerful enough, especially with Undying.

My initial impression of ROS has been very positive. Act V is awesome. Adventure mode is just what I wanted in the game.

Might be bored in a few weeks, but currently I am loving the game.

Last night I got a Thunderfury!

New D3 patch is out.

Here is Blizz's summary video of the patch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW3o0sFldoc#t=61

I've been snowed in for the past few days. Played this for a few hours each day. Its pretty fun. The game feels better... with a few flaws.

Quote from AsianInvasion

Apparently, my favorite builds are going the way of the dodo as soon as the expansion out. I also primarily played for the social aspect, and now that none of my RL friends play, I've been spending my free time doing other things. I'll probably check out the expansion when it comes out, but I have very little interest in the game ATM.

Try Path of Exile. It's an amazing free game. Much closer to D2 than D3 ever was.

Those builds were great, but they were too strong. Infinite CC from Wiz and Infinite Resources and effectively health from Barbs was just too good. Blizz had to act to make their new content non-trivial.

Also looks like no LS in the expansion pack. Going to be interesting...

That's insane.

I was a fan of the gold auction house. It totally makes sense to kill it though. It makes the game too efficient.

Possible hint of release date too?

Maybe they are switching to a different kind of trading system. Possibly barter system through the use of the new materials?

No idea...

"Scientists also conclude that animals are delicious."

Hello again, and happy near year!

I did some tweaking and let the training run for a day and a half. I managed to get past the "everything is a blob" stage and the results are more often coherent than not. Of course, for as long as I ran it, there's some possibility of overfitting, so I've attached some examples for y'all to eyeball. Are any of these works obviously derivative? It's hard to do direct comparisons to existing art because if it did copy anything, it may have done so in a subtle way or mixed it in with novel features. That being said, I'm fairly confident that the majority of artworks produced by the system are original, it's just that some of them (like the ones I'm showing you) seem too good to be true.

That being said, many of the artworks are at least somewhat noisy. For example, I've attached one where it's clear we have a monster of some kind charging out of a portal, but it's very hard to make out exactly what's going on. Other times, the artwork is ambiguous or just strange. I've attached an example of what appears to be a man wearing a very big hat of some kind.

Right now I'm training on low resolution images because I can do the training faster and because it's easier for an adversarial approach to converge on good solutions when it doesn't have to contend with lots of fine details. I'm sure we'll eventually be able to produce full-fledged, high resolution artworks that look and feel like Magic art; these are just the first baby steps towards novel art generation.

EDIT: I'm also going to look into messing with vector arithmetic with the art generation vectors. With any luck, I should be able to rotate the "nun" to see her face. That is, if she even has a face. More on that later.

EDIT(2): The more interesting thing I'm noticing is that the lighting of scenes is believable. That suggests it has, from learning how to make believable images, learned a primitive model of lighting and shadow. That would make sense, in the same way that studying faces leads to a 3D geometry of faces that can be used to do rotations. I have some fun experiments to try soon...

Seen here http://www.londondrugs.com/magic-the-gathering----zendikar-fat-pack/L8929283.html?q=zendikar&start=3

Quote from bakgat »

Do atheist not have Bibles already?

You are attempting to dodge the question -- or rather, attempting to dodge a question, for what you wrote makes no sense as a response to the question I actually asked. I asked whether you would be supportive if an atheist refused to sell Bibles to customers, as this flight attendant refused to sell alcohol to customers. And I am still asking it.

Quote from bakgat »

God does the US have no labour laws? How important is it really for people on aeroplanes to be drunk? How hard would it really have been to get the other non Muslim flight attendants to serve the alcohol and let this lady serve the non alcoholic beverages?

How can a company really be committed to equal employment policies when they are willing to fire people over nothing more than a religious issue.? Do people have so little respect for other people in the work place in the US?

I can't help but wonder: would you be singing the same tune if an atheist bookstore employee were refusing to sell people Bibles?

I bet the flight attendant has a dry sense of humor.

Quote from hyalapterouslemur »

EDH players will be happy, if nothing else.

i'm so tired of this rationale.

no we won't be. there are so many other better options in edh for ramp. this thing is... its limited filler that won't see play anywhere but in draft and sealed. its the only reason its a rare too.

stop perpetuating the idea of edh meaning bad.

Tbese are cool but they seem very good. You are effectively getting two cards for one draft pick. Honestly, if you are trying to make certain draft strategies more consistent, trim your cube.

Quote from soebek »

This isn't a punishment. Wizards aren't saying "hey, we don't think the courts did a good enough job, so we're going to punish you some more".

It's even worse. Wizards are saying "hey, some guys are raising a stink about you on Twitter so we're banning you to make the problem go away." Let's not kid ourselves here. Jesse is not being banned for his history as a sex offender. Jesse is banned for running afoul of an online Twitter mob.

Even if we assume that Jesse should never have been allowed to play MtG competitively because he's dangerous, disgusting or reprehensible the correct course of action would be to implement a policy disallowing sex offenders from competitive MtG. This ad hoc nonsense is pure applesauce. Complete jiggery-pokery.

Let me try to articulate what I see as the problem here. There's no question that Wizards, as a private company, has the legal right to ban whomever they please for essentially any reason they please. The relevant question is whether Wizards' decision was prudent and whether they've established a good precedent for when this type of issue arises again in the future.

Let's step away from the specific person and crime for a moment, and ask the madlibs version of the question: "How should Wizards handle the situation where Player has been convicted of Serious Crime?"

Broadly speaking, there are two ways they could go about it. Option 1 is to have a rules-based approach. For example, have a rule written down that lists certain types of convictions that result in automatic banning. So far, Wizards doesn't have a policy like this. Option 2 is the case-by-case approach. Have someone look at each case as it arises and determine whether a banning is warranted. This is the approach Wizards has taken.

For the case-by-case approach to work, there needs to be at least one clearly defined end goal. Otherwise, the process will be random and arbitrary. Wizards hasn't clearly stated what its ultimate goal(s) are here, but I've heard two thrown around. First, the goal might be to maximize player safety at tournaments - both actual safety and the perception or feeling of safety. Second, the goal might be to avoid negative public opinion about WotC or competitive Magic.

Based on the circumstances, I don't think the safety goal is playing much of a role in the Zach Jesse banning. As others have argued, he seems to be rehabilitated and there is nothing that indicates a risk of re-offending. Another issue is that, while I'm not aware of anyone ever having been raped at an MTG tournament, thefts are extremely common. If Wizards was concerned foremost about safety, they would be hyper-vigilant about anyone with a theft-related criminal record.

So the only goal that remains is managing and improving public perception. It should be obvious that this is Wizards' primary motivation for the ban, and clearly there are good reasons for a company like Wizards to care about its public image. But let me suggest that this is a questionable goal to pursue through bannings. If Wizards makes case-by-case banning decisions on the basis of public perception, it's very easy to end up in a world where (1) bans are arbitrary and unjust, and (2) the list of bannable offenses is unpredictable and potentially limitless. The arbitrariness component comes from the fact that the ability of the public to care about something is limited so only the squeakiest wheel will get the grease. If two people with similar criminal records enter the same tournament but only one gets their name and offense tweeted about, then only the one who got tweeted about will be banned. The other person's crime didn't draw attention and thus there is no public perception reason to ban them. This is manifestly unjust. The potential for growing the list of bannable offenses is possibly even more concerning. For example, why should bannable offenses be limited to crimes? What about expressing an unpopular opinion? If someone gets on the MTGS debate forums and expresses opposition to gay marriage or expresses support for the Baltimore rioters, these types of opinions could spread and result in public backlash. Should this be grounds for a ban? What about Jim Davis' SCG article? Some people thought that article was sexist, why shouldn't he be banned for it? Or maybe it comes out that a very popular pro committed a serious crime, but this pro is so popular that most people don't care and want to let it slide. Should the banning criteria be based on a popularity/likability contest?

It's easy to see how an ad-hoc banning policy based on public perception is throwing the door wide open for problems down the line. If Wizards thinks that certain criminal convictions need to be off limits at tournaments, it needs to set out a clear, written policy.

Quote from asmallcat »

Now, obviously this has little to do with whether or not a convicted rapist should be banned from playing a card game, but every time someone says something awful and has to deal with the consequences, and every time the ever-shrinking proportion of shrieking conservatives jumps up to shout about how unfair it is that we no longer turn a blind eye to this crap, it makes me smile.

This really isn't a conservative/liberal issue. It's a popular/unpopular issue.

It so happens today that liberal social values are enjoying enormous popularity (and as a supporter of things like gay marriage and gender equality, I'm happy about that). But things have not always been this way, and might not be this way in the future. What if another 9/11 happens and anyone who doesn't come off as a super-patriotic American is suddenly seen with suspicion and moral disapproval? It's happened before and could happen again. Would you favor WotC banning someone for protesting US involvement in a war or for sharing pro-communist quotes on Twitter?

And another poster brought up atheism. A shockingly large number of people think that atheists are immoral or just all-around bad people. Should Wizards be banning atheists? Why not, if it turned out that the public favored doing so?

The case itself is irrelevant, people. Let's get this back on track, because many of you have completely missed the point. Both offenses are bad. Are they reason enough to ban?

Further, it doesn't matter how comparably bad Chapin's offense is. If the implication for Jesse is that he could be a potential repeat offender, we have to have the same consideration for Chapin. Wizards has an interest in not having their events become drug distribution points, which is a far more likely scenario than Jesse being a danger to anyone. Chapin could be considered more dangerous on Magic Online as well, since there is the potential he could use the software to make deals.

It's irrelevant whether or not Jesse is worse than Chapin. The question is if the banning was the right thing to do.

If the question is about safety, we shouldn't be allowing any felons into magic events.

If it's about public image, honoring a convicted drug dealer isn't really any better. And let's be clear, Chapin and his partner imported hundreds of thousands of ecstasy tablets into the US over a long period of time.

Quote from LiquidOcelot »

If he plea guilty to sexual assault, that would make him register as a sex offender if I'm not mistaken. If that's true, wouldn't he be required NOT to be near a place where children could possibly be around?

The first part is true, and he is registered. The second part is not, since his case did not involve a minor.