If a deck lets you win on turn 1 6.25% of the time, and completely flop over 50% of the time, you’ll lose often enough that your deck isn’t going to win any tournaments. That’s not an oppressive force in a metagame.
But if even that is too much for certain players, they can just avoid Vintage. There are non-eternal formats with no t1 wins. Pioneer, Standard etc have no such t1 wins.
For the uninitiated, the likelihood of being able to pull off a 4-card combo on turn 1 is very small, even in unrestricted formats. Decks that rely on this interaction either include ways to win on later turns or are unreliable.
Back in the day decks had a 40 card minimum and no max copies of cards. There were decks that were just mountains and lightning bolts. So getting a combo like this out wasn’t completely unheard of.
Nowadays, combos need lots of drawing and fishing to hit in the first couple turns.
Confirm, and I am guilty of having owned, and currently owning, functional decks that basically just boil down to mountains and lightning bolts. The “new” (decades old) rules forced me to diversify a bit, but Fallen Empires brought us the gift of the Goblin Grenade, so it’s all gravy for me. Four goblins and four Goblin Grenades is a win, even if you don’t attack with any of the goblins. You can spice things up in the interim with Lightning Bolts if you like.
The typical variant I’ve seen is using a bunch more Moxes and Lotuses and so forth to play Ancestral Recalls/Timetwisters or Timewalks or similar to either pull the right cards from your deck or skip your opponent’s turn until you draw them naturally. And doing such a thing nowadays is… expensive.
Also, if you shoot your load and your opponent has a way to counter your fireball, now you’re standing there with your pants down around your ankles and 1 health. Ready to be done in by a single goblin, or possibly a stiff breeze.
Even so, in modern formats where Black Lotus, Moxes, and Channel are not outright banned you can only have one of each per deck anyhow. So the notion of having 4 of each to pad your deck out to the minimum 60 cards likewise goes out the window. Still, having this spread available is sort of like having a nuke in your suitcase. You’re never actually going to set it off, but it’s nice sometimes to let everyone around you know that you could if you really felt like it.
I also have an Enduring Renewal based infinite mana deck that is similarly impractical, but no less spectacular when you actually manage to pull off its core combo. Your ability to put your opponent into the negatives – or yourself into an insurmountably gargantuan health pool via Alabaster Potions – is limited only by your opponent’s patience and lack of conceding on the spot in disgust as you shuffle your Ornithopter back and forth and back and forth…
I have a more straighforward lightning bolt/shock/goblin grenade deck that is less exotic, but considerably more reliable. The explosions it makes are smaller, but everyone explodes sooner or later.
I’d disagree. I keep up with both MtG and YGO (MtG as a game I like and YGO as a horrified observer), and the two games are not even close to equivalent here.
In YGO’s one official format, the oft-quoted statistic is that games don’t usually last more than 3 turns - those 3 turns being half the length of how MtG usually measures turns - Starting Player, Non-Starting Player, Starting Player, game. The interaction relies on your opponent having the right disruptive tool to slow down your combo.
For MtG, the only formats that are really like that are Legacy and Vintage, formats that are generally incredibly expensive to play in paper and definitely not where new players are gonna start. Even Modern, the next oldest and thus powerful format, has games that typically last at absolute least 3 turns for each player (twice the YGO standard) and most of the time last much longer. Then Standard, where new players are expected to start, has so much less combo “I win the game now” potential specifically because it’s a bad feeling for new players and the creators don’t want the format to be that fast. I can’t find a great source on it, but winning a Standard game anytime before turn 5 is notable, and usually means your opponent didn’t do anything.
Sure, it’s 3 turns, but each turn lasts 10x as long as in Magic, so it evens out. Also, it’s a pretty big exaggeration - the meme is “turn 3 dead”, but you can usually last a couple more and hope to get some kind of out.
Lol the censor board and Winnie the Pooh reminds me of the time Chinese censors were having a rough time trying to censor Megan Three Stallion’s (the artist who was featured in Cardi B’s W.A.P.) performance livestreamed at Coachella…
You don’t even need to watch the sequel to see that, as genies being bound by specific rules is the whole point of tricking him into becoming a genie.
Though after Aladdin wishes for the Genie’s freedom, it really opens a can of worms as to what that means. Sure, I guess he’s free to roam the earth, and no longer bound to grant wishes. But at the same time, has he now lost that power?
Because Disney ending aside, you would think an unbound genie with his full powers would be something that only ends badly.
It does not make a lot of sense, but it was sort of established earlier in that particular universe (the “phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty living space” thing).
My main problem with this always was Aladdin suggesting to Jafar “Hey, you know, the genie’s still more powerful”, and Jafar reacts exactly how Aladdin had planned, by wishing specifically to be the most powerful genie.
Why was that the only option he could think of? Where was it written that a sorcerer could not be more powerful than a genie?
Aladdin tricks him by saying if a genie gave him his power, the genie could take them back too… But in the end it’s still the genie who makes him a genie too, so why would that be any different?
Yeah, the fact that all genies are bound to lamps there is dumb - one even gets created for Jafar. How does that make any sense, even in that fantastical setting? And it’s not like they all have to be bound, since they can be wished free.
Jafar wished to be “the world’s most powerful sorcerer.” so you’re right, he could have wished to be still more powerful. Or to be a free genie. Maybe there are universes where the Disney villain didn’t hold the idiot ball at the end and succeeded in their plans. Now that would be an interesting “What If” series!
It’s even worse than the villain being an idiot in this case IMO. It’s being an idiot exactly in the right way, despite it seeming quite far-fetched.
It somehow requires that Jafar believes only a genie can be ultra-powerful, but ignores that a powerful genie is supposed to be bound.
They wanted Aladdin to win by being cunning, because it’s supposed to be his main thing, and that’s okay, even if they need Jafar to be an ass for a few seconds. But for this to work, Aladdin didn’t just need to be cunning, he had to be a freaking psychic.
Again, if we’re only talking about Disney canon, according to the sequel and series (because really that movie was just the pilot for the animated series), the genie is supposed to have lost a lot of his power after being freed. It’s not obvious how much of it really.
It’s also not obvious how “bound” the genies are to begin with.
Genie is tricked into getting Aladdin out of the cave of wonders without using a wish, and he looks a bit annoyed but not that much (and it worked). He also basically forces a wish on an unconscious Aladdin to save his life, saying he can’t do it without a wish.
Whatever magic contract is used there looks quite open to interpretation…
He’s an eldritch shapeshifter, subconsciously transforming into what people believe he should be. Sort of like the Norse gods in Marvel Comics. Until Alladin rubs the lamp, he didn’t exist as a conscious being because nobody was there to think him into being.
He wished to be a prince, his royal entourage hypothetically included several people capable of assassinating Jafar on the order, it was just down to Aladdin being a stickler for being an active participant in proceedings that hindered him taking that less direct route.
So... is she sending the dick into the friend zone? Or is she saying that the dick is effectively a friend zone and she wants to use it more? Or is she saying that everyone in her friend zone goes on his dick? Or should he put anyone in his friend zone on his dick? I'm confused.
We’ve become so successful at getting food, we don’t have to move much to do it any more. So we have to go out of our way to be active to stay healthy since evolution takes so long to catch up.
I’ve got my money on that not happening until after an apocalyptic event sends us back to the iron age. And the adaptations we’re gonna get aren’t gonna be pretty.
Unless we get fucked spectacularly we probably wont devolve back to the iron age. At worst maybe the age of sails but even then it’d be rather scattershot on what tech would survive. You might have a scenario where most tech is at 1700s level but with radio and modern firearms or atleast ww1-gulf war level.
Yeah it’ll definitely be a mish mash of technology but a very large part of humanity will be left alone to their own devices having to find any way to survive
The main difference though was those were just societal not ecological.
People were able to bounce back easily because resources were still plentiful and food was everywhere. With climate change a lot of resources are going to become unavailable.
With the level of technical knowledge we’ve achieved, there’s no way we’re going back to doing things exactly the way they used to. One example that jumps out at me is the method this primitive technology guy on youtube uses to stoke his furnace. He’s basically made a little manual turbine out of leaves and vines to push his air rather than one of those little squeeze box things.
Obviously I’m not a blacksmith or historian so I don’t actually know how common something like that might have been, but I’m guessing it’s not super old. In any case, I’m sure there are other ways that we’d apply our more advanced knowledge to tackling the sorts of problems we’d be looking at with a collapse of manufacturing and shipping infrastructure.
Honestly, a technologically adept but non-industrial society of artisans sounds kind of cool.
A step further even, a lot of us need to burn off excess energy, because we’re so well off (evolutionarily speaking) that we practically can’t help but take in more energy than we burn naturally
I used to refer to going to the gym as the “farm work simulator”. It always amazed me that society progressed to the point where physical labor isn’t necessary, but we chose to pay money, so that we can pretend to do it, in order to live longer
Ngl, if they make gym work as some kind of “heavy work” simulator games like Farming or Mining, with tracking progress, achievements, and competitive ranking, I would be at the gym way more.
VR games already make me work out way more than I thought I would.
I had a room mate who would drive a 5 mile round trip to the gym and back to walk five miles on the treadmill. I didn’t have a car at the time and was always pointing out the nonsense of it. She said she just preferred the atmosphere of the gym to the side of the road or any of the many beautiful nature trails near by. 🤷♀️
To be fair, I can close my eyes and just sort of flail on an elliptical in a way that would absolutely hurt me if I tried it on the ground. It’s also a lot lower impact and when I’m done I can just stop.
I get more of a school bully vibe from it. The stereotypical old person joke is “wife bad”, this sounds more like something a self-described “alpha male” would say.
It’s legal. An annotated version, with neither the swastika nor a picture of the greasy Nazi fuck, was published a few years back and tens of thousands were sold, primarily to German libraries and schools. It’s a good study on how shitheads think.
I often buy books written by shitheads when I end up studying fascism or other radical right wing movements. Heck, even more mainstream conservative movements with radical imagery or frequent dogwhistles. Reading books by shitty people on shitty topics is very important on understanding how the movements work and think.
Reading about fascism from antifascists is good and all, but understanding fascist movements when they are most active requires reading fascist works. Heck, even with books like Mien Kampf, a book with a ton of analysis done by antifascists could still be a potentially useful read for antifascists.
That’s smart. I can’t count how many times I’ve learned about new dogwhistles or the details of various ideologies and realized an acquaintance was a fascist and/or racist sack of shit, although I’ve never been surprised. This would help me realize in real-time, so I can call them out on their shit.
I do feel like I’d need a book cover with something like “I’m reading -book title- to understand scumbags. I do not support its ideology”.
The copyright was held by the state of Bavaria as the official heir of Hitler and they simply said “Nope, no new printings.”
As the copyright ran out in 2015 everyone can copy and print it again. Though most don’t care, even the most right wing nutcracks realize that the book is rather badly written.
One more thing: While “Mein Kampf” is only available at rather high prices the books of Vladimir Putin are available for FREE on Amazon as EBooks and the printed version is €1. He wrote even years ago straight forward that he is willing to start the third world war to make Russia Great again and even laid out the list of nations he wants to subjugate: Ukraine was the first step, but in his ideology he also claims Alaska, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland and many many more nations. Overall he mentioned he would spare Germany, France and Italy but only because they have nukes and the US as their ally.
iirc it wasn’t exactly banned in germany. Iirc the state of bavaria held the copyright and sued everyone who sold the book without their consent, while not printing any copies themselves.
If you wish for anything other than the end of deadly conflicts between humans or something similar then you need to think about your priorities real hard…
We’re getting into the nature of free will, whether or not it exists at all. One of the hardest questions we’ve never really been able to answer, and quite possibly never will.
What if the well is merely looking into the infinite possibilities and determining who the true love is based on what will happen anyway? What if she also made a wish at another well at the same time, also for true love? What if she didn’t exist at all, prior to his wish, and was created as his true love?
Okay skip that. I’m going to wish for an automated droid processing plant/factory with design files of every known class of ship- and the defiant, just to fuck with people.
Nah, it’s magic, it can just make it so that the girl happened to be in the right place. Maybe it told the girl that she would find true love there and she decided to go.
Hmm. I think the first thing I’ll do, is give a few to Ukraine. You know. Just to demonstrate their total superiority. Maybe install kill switches so they have to come back for maintenance periodically. Like John Deere or something.
Then get all the “good” guys addicted to them so all the “bad” guys get fucked… Then hit the kill switches and demand everyone stops being fucking mean.
Maybe give them a few of the crappy battle droids from the prequels, so they’re autonomous and can’t necessarily be hacked.
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