Magic: The Gathering thread
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@blakeyrat said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I know how fucking awful Steam is at time tracking
Yeah. Virtual Desktop is an app I leave running even while AFK, and Steam keeps happily tracking hours to it.
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@error I'm bad about closing launchers when I'm done play games, so sometimes Steam'll ring up 10 hours of me "running" Skyrim when it's just the launcher being open overnight. There's also no fucking way in hell I played "Spandex Force: Champion Rising" for 18.7 hours, WTF is that from. I didn't even have it INSTALLED that long.
It's also tracked CoD: Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer for 13.85 hours which is really confusing because AFAIK I only played that on Xbox, never on PC. I guess maybe I did play on PC? You'd think I'd remember.
I've also have a lot of games I've played TONS of that Steam hasn't tracked at all, or tracked and then lost count. And not even old ones.
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@blakeyrat That happened with me with EVE for a while, since I'd quit the game but forget to close the launcher, so it tacked on an extra hundred hours or so that I hadn't actually played to that point.
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@blakeyrat said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
"Spandex Force: Champion Rising"
An amazing name, but I don't want to see what it is.
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@Magus You are correct. Your hopes for a funny, enjoyable game would be instantly crushed.
I think I did a vid on it, not sure if I ever uploaded it... ah, I did:
Spandex Force: Champion Rising – 12:23
— blakeyrat
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@blakeyrat Wow. What a waste of a name. It isn't even bad in a funny way, it's just lame and boring.
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@Magus Yeah they were going for the Puzzle Quest thing, but Puzzle Quest is genuinely funny and entertaining.
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I started playing at the end of Urzas / beginning of Masques, and I dropped out for a while after Ravnica.
I dabbled with Lorwyn and Shadowmoor (because I saw some sets going for cheap), before coming back properly for Scars of Mirrodin. Scars was such a good block and reminded me of the reasons I started playing to begin with. I couldn't resist playing it.
I dropped out again part way through Innistrad and haven't really paid attention since. Innistrad wasn't terrible, but I was disappointed with it after the awesomeness of Scars. I don't really want to spend the vast sums of money needed for Magic, and it's only become more expensive, especially with the introduction of the mythic rarity. The best chase rares were already getting towards £100 per card, and now the prices are even more ludicrous (fuck making a tournament deck, I'd rather put a new PC rig together thank you very much).
I do occasionally play the MTG apps, I think 2015 was the last one I played. I'll probably get the new one in time for my summer holiday.
I used to love Magic so much, but Wizards have such a heavy focus on the tournament scene, they don't seem to care enough about casual play. I don't think I'll ever go back unless I win the lottery...
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@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I dropped out again part way through Innistrad and haven't really paid attention since. Innistrad wasn't terrible, but I was disappointed with it after the awesomeness of Scars.
We're back in Innistrad again now, and I'm not a huge fan, but the second half is better than the first.
Sadly, Mirrodin will not come again, because the plane was destroyed... however the next one is Kaladesh, Chandra's home plane, so we have a good chance of having some sort of artifact-dominated set again.
@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I don't really want to spend the vast sums of money needed for Magic, and it's only become more expensive, especially with the introduction of the mythic rarity. The best chase rares were already getting towards £100 per card, and now the prices are even more ludicrous (fuck making a tournament deck, I'd rather put a new PC rig together thank you very much).
Yeah, that would be the least fun way to play, for me. I like building with what I get.
@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I do occasionally play the MTG apps, I think 2015 was the last one I played. I'll probably get the new one in time for my summer holiday.
2015 was the worst one, but the new one is free.
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I followed the design articles of the Time Cycle, where they did funky things like print cards from the future, and color shift some staples, because the design process was fascinating.
And because I really, really, really wanted those red Giant Growths for my red/green speed deck.
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@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I used to love Magic so much, but Wizards have such a heavy focus on the tournament scene, they don't seem to care enough about casual play.
Its wierd reading that, as I and almost every competitive/semi-competitive player I know personally feels the oposite, that wizards is going overboard catering to casual players down-powering standard into a sorceries-and-creatures-only-slugfest and wasting resources in stuff like Commander, conspiracy, making 2HG prereleases and such other kitchen table-y efforts.
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@Sels said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
know personally feels the oposite, that wizards
everyone feels wizards is "doing it wrong and not catering to me" because 2/3 of the product aren't for them.
That's because Wizards caters to 3 different demographics all at once.
Successfully.
That's why each 1/3 gets good shit, and Wizards keeps making hundreds of millions of dollars.
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@Sels said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Its wierd reading that, as I and almost every competitive/semi-competitive player I know personally feels the oposite, that wizards is going overboard catering to casual players down-powering standard into a sorceries-and-creatures-only-slugfest and wasting resources in stuff like Commander, conspiracy, making 2HG prereleases and such other kitchen table-y efforts.
I completely understand what you're saying, and agree.
My problem is that it's a similar model to "freemium" games, i.e. you cannot be competitive unless you're willing to pay (a lot of money) for the best cards. Casual play suffers heavily because it's still an arms race of who has the best shit. If you're on the wrong end of that, you're screwed. It's almost impossible to find an environment that has a fair balance.
I don't have a problem with paying more for good cards as long as the prices are reasonable, but they're not. I understand that Wizards want to make money from Magic, and well done to them for it being so successful, but in it's current state it's way too expensive for me, by orders of magnitude.
This is why I say the focus is on "pro" players. You have to be really serious about Magic to be able to justify buying the best cards from a set. Casual players have been priced out of the game, unless they're willing to deal with the fact that they're playing in an unfair environment. Sure you could make some silly house rules (no mythics allowed, etc), but that wouldn't be fair on Billy who just pulled a mythic from a pack because he's a lucky cunt.
This is what killed the fun for me. I understand that not everyone feels this way, this is just my experience. Maybe, one day Magic will get its hooks into me again, we'll see...
I do enjoy the occasional draft or sealed deck tournament. My friends and I bought a couple of boxes of boosters, and we do repacks. This means it's a fixed single time expense, it's a very fair balanced environment, and people don't just pull the expensive cards, because they're not going to get to keep them.
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@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I don't have a problem with paying more for good cards as long as the prices are reasonable, but they're not. I understand that Wizards want to make money from Magic, and well done to them for it being so successful, but in it's current state it's way too expensive for me, by orders of magnitude.
Tho in fairness, Wizards doesn't gain anything from the "expensive" cards. They make their money on the sale of boosters (and other pre-sealed product). They're randomized, and the cost-per-card is exactly the same.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Tho in fairness, Wizards doesn't gain anything from the "expensive" cards. They make their money on the sale of boosters (and other pre-sealed product). They're randomized, and the cost-per-card is exactly the same.
That's a good point. The problem is the rarity of mythics is ridiculous, and the price of said mythics is equally ridiculous, add in the fact that you may need 4 copies of a mythic card for your deck, the price of your deck is prohibitively high before you've even got past the first 4 cards
We didn't need another rarity level when mythics were introduced, chase rares were already ridiculously overpriced / hard to obtain by buying boxes alone. Adding a higher rarity level for the most powerful cards doesn't help players, it just ensures that more people miss out on the fun.
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@r10pez10 said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Damn it, some Chinese company stole my MtG counterfeiting idea.
Would these fake cards pass casual inspection at local non-professional tournaments? Asking for a friend.
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Do you have any links for where to get these fakes from? I'm happy for you to PM me if you don't want to post them in public.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Tho in fairness, Wizards doesn't gain anything from the "expensive" cards. They make their money on the sale of boosters (and other pre-sealed product). They're randomized, and the cost-per-card is exactly the same.
Yes and no. They can adjust the frequency those cards appear, which means someone trying to get an ultra rare card the stupid way will buy a hundred boosters instead of ten.
Yes, I know people who buy a whole box at a time hoping for one specific card. It's a gambling urge that drives them, I think.
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@error said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Damn it, some Chinese company stole my MtG counterfeiting idea.
Every card ever is in Tabletop Simulator.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Tho in fairness, Wizards doesn't gain anything from the "expensive" cards. They make their money on the sale of boosters (and other pre-sealed product). They're randomized, and the cost-per-card is exactly the same.
It’s Games Workshop who have managed to do just that, though, with plastic models rather than cards. And for some reason crack down on people selling loose parts in a way I doubt WotC would ever want to do.
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@error said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Would these fake cards pass casual inspection at local non-professional tournaments? Asking for a friend.
I've seen tournaments that let you use up to X proxies, at a cost of $Y per proxy. Usually something like "Your entry fee is $5, +$0.50 per proxy (up to 16 proxies)".
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Stop making me read upside-down text. It hurts my head.
Filed under: And I'm too lazy to rotate the image., INB4 text at arbitrary angles.
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@error said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
Stop making me read upside-down text. It hurts my head.
Filed under: And I'm too lazy to rotate the image., INB4 text at arbitrary angles.
I was wondering why it was all italicized.
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@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
We didn't need another rarity level when mythics were introduced, chase rares were already ridiculously overpriced / hard to obtain by buying boxes alone.
AFAIR it didn't really change much - some "rares" became "mythics", but there are often staples at rare and not mythic, and I think the total number of rare+mythic cards in the set is the same as the total number of rares used to be, so if you're hunting any specific card it makes nearly no difference.
EDIT: now that I've checked it, any given mythic is apparently "twice as rare" as any given rare.
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@Maciejasjmj From personal experience helping friends sift through piles of boosters, just because two cards have the same printed rarity doesn't mean they have the same frequency of occurence.
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@error said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
From personal experience helping friends sift through piles of boosters, just because two cards have the same printed rarity doesn't mean they have the same frequency of occurence.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
I don't have a problem with paying more for good cards as long as the prices are reasonable, but they're not. I understand that Wizards want to make money from Magic, and well done to them for it being so successful, but in it's current state it's way too expensive for me, by orders of magnitude.
Tho in fairness, Wizards doesn't gain anything from the "expensive" cards. They make their money on the sale of boosters (and other pre-sealed product). They're randomized, and the cost-per-card is exactly the same.
In the world of @Lorne-Kates, the lottery doesn't gain anything more from the PowerBall jackpot versus scratch off tickets either.
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@Maciejasjmj TIL. I suppose it was a statistical anomaly from the (relatively) small sample size. I know I had ~14 of Rare A, 11 of Rare B, and 1 of Rare C. It seemed skewed.
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@izzion said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
In the world of @Lorne-Kates, the lottery doesn't gain anything more from the PowerBall jackpot versus scratch off tickets either.
Imagine a world where you can buy PowerBall tickets, and scratch off tickets. But they're sold in a sealed envelope, and you don't know which one you'll get.
People are allowed to re-sell lottery tickets.
The envelopes cost $5, and are sold by the gaming commission.
People who get the PowerBall tickets turn around and sell them for $100.
The gaming commission makes money from selling the $5 envelopes, not the $100 resell. Yes, they may sell more $5 envelopes from people chasing the PowerBall tickets-- but the don't set the price (or make anything) off of the $100 resell.
This is not a hard concept.
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Except it's more like... "before PowerBall changed the rules, they sold X tickets. Now they sell Y tickets where Y > X, because they made the rares more rare (bigger jackpots because winning is less likely), and boom, more money!"
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@izzion said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
because they made the rares more rare
o.O
I mean... technically, sure (You get either a mythic or a rare in every pack, so technically the rares are rarer than before because you might get a mythic instead). But it's not like they made stuff more rare - the rarity is pretty much the same...
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But there are only a few highly desirable rare cards (the $100 cards). So changing the system to add another tier of rarity, and oh it just so happens that all the centralizing (overpowered) cards are mythic, whoops, I guess people will be buying twice as many packs hoping to hit the $100 card lotto so they can build a competitive deck.
Totally unintentional on Wizards' part, I'm sure. </s>
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@izzion said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
and oh it just so happens that all the centralizing (overpowered) cards are mythic,
Except... not really. Wizards have generally pushed flashy stuff up to Mythic, not necessarily good stuff.
Snapcaster Mage is a rare. Siege Rhino is a rare. Plenty of staples get into rare, and plenty of useless 10 mana cards go into mythic.
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@Maciejasjmj and then they go and make Gisela mythic and Bruna rare
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@Maciejasjmj said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
@izzion said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
and oh it just so happens that all the centralizing (overpowered) cards are mythic,
Except... not really. Wizards have generally pushed flashy stuff up to Mythic, not necessarily good stuff.
Snapcaster Mage is a rare. Siege Rhino is a rare. Plenty of staples get into rare, and plenty of useless 10 mana cards go into mythic.
Yeah.
Plus you still have the OP-As-Fuck legacy stuff, and it's all rare.
Of course, they're kinda trying to kill some of the OP-ness about it off with stuff like Rest in Peace for Legacy Reanimate (also screws over Golgari and anything that plays graveyard tricks...) so...
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@r10pez10 What's with those teeth and those hairstyles?
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@dkf said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
@r10pez10 What's with those teeth and those hairstyles?
That's what crack addiction does to a person.
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@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
That's what
crackMagic addiction does to a person.FTFY ^.^
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Eternal Masters
HOW DID I MISS THAT
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@DoctorJones said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
@Lorne-Kates said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
That's what
crackMagic addiction does to a person.FTFY ^.^
(it's almost as if that was the joke in the first place)
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@Lorne-Kates oh, fucksticks!
Meh, give me a break, I'm fighting a migraine today.
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@error said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
That said, I have a Magic Online account I haven't logged into in years. I dumped more money than I'd like to admit into digital cards (which I still think is the way to go; physical cards have a lot of drawbacks). If anybody wanted to meet me on there, I could maybe share the wealth.
Is this still true? If so do you have any modern staples I could borrow?
I like thinking up deck lists more than I like playing, but sometimes I would actually like to try a list out, see what it plays like. This deck is modeled on my understanding of how successful twin decks used to work (I only started playing magic about a year ago, so I've never actually seen splinter twin played), where they could win just by playing the UR tempo game, but they also had a 4-mana combo that would just win the game if the opponent didn't leave up disruption at all times. I want to see if the plan of attacking with 1/1s and casting burn spells (or blocking death's shadow with the tokens and stockpiling the burn spells) can be aggressive enough to win against an opponent who's playing around the combo, but the idea of actually spending money on the cards I would need is still a bit hard for me.
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Apparently there's a (tiny) set of cards being released.
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@Tsaukpaetra Thank god they're silverbordered.
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@TwelveBaud said in Magic: The Gathering thread:
@Tsaukpaetra Thank god they're silverbordered.
Yeah. Totally unusable in practice but interesting nonetheless.