Ahh, I knew that proc must have some neat potential! That’s incredible lol, definitely have to mess with it more.

I had the same thoughts when I first encountered it (and I think it was the only time I saw it). I guess that explains why it’s so rare. The potential is not too obvious. And maybe I have to add, not too easily unlocked. At least my approach resulted in a rather complicated deck with many points of failure. But I guess when you run so many copy spells yourself, you know these situations when you draw only copy spells but nothing to copy :D

For that reason, I currently run only 3 Estrid and only 2 Wingbright. I had Mirrormade in for a while - thought it would be neat to copy opponent enchantments with it, to further replicate them with Estrid, even after Mirrormade has been removed. But after a while I realized I never had a good opportunity to use it.

It’s really really amusing with oddball cards like Haphazard Bombardment

Man, that sounds good! That’s 7 mana, right? And you get one of those for free in each upkeep, distributing aim markers on everything ^^

I guess you need to be more careful with the expiration, since that is harder to predict here than with sagas.

Haphazard Bombardment is too far from my current approach, so I won’t try myself. But if you do, I’d love to hear about it!

Given how much noise exit parties, or generally anti EU sentiments can cause, I’d also prefer a higher bar. Be welcomed if you join, but please be sure about it.

in any ranked modes, winning is the point, so I feel like there isn’t really any room to complain about fast and efficient decks in ranked play.

I slightly disagree. I mean, mostly you’re obviously right; playing to win is foremost at home in ranked. But I think other legit points exist simultaneously.

I want interesting matches. I want the matchmaking to give me an opponent which is neither too hard nor too easy. That’s my main reason for playing ranked historic.

I want to test the deck I built, see how it fares against mature decks. I play unranked to check if I got the basics right (like land composition), and ranked to find out how viable certain ideas actually are in the current meta.

But sure, it is perfectly fine to play ranked to win (lol), and I don’t blame those who do. I just feel we can and should expect more challenge required and less luck. I lose so often with only having played 1 land, that’s just ridiculous. My deck has answers to all these threats, but asking wether I have the fitting solution against an unknown opponent in my first 8 cards puts a lot more weight on luck than on skill.

There’s another thought, not sure how to put it. Maybe it’s less about the individual match and more about different strategies competing in a shared environment. From that perspective, it’s perfectly fine to have deck A which wins versus B, but loses against C and D. Then, player skill sits at the judgement how much B we currently have, and what exactly A is. However, the current client heavily emphasizes looking at individual matches (that’s where you see that big VICTORY / DEFEATED), and I think you need 3rd party tools to get any information how good you’re doing against certain types of opponents.

< cash spending >

Aw, that sounds horrible! I had no idea, I don’t spend any money on this. WotC got enough from me back when I bought paper cards, and somehow I got along fine in Arena without money.

But I remember having a similar problem when we still played with paper cards. You’re forced to keep spending to keep playing with your friends, or drop out at some point. For inhouse paper, at least we could “print” proxies.

Would be nice if they considered how much each player has spent on their current deck for the matchmaking. Like high spenders have to face other high spenders, and budget players are grouped with themselves.

Though of course, in both cases, the economic incentive for WotC is to create unfair situations.

< play patterns >

I don’t know what words like Timeless, Standard or Pioneer mean, but yeah, seems we feel the same. Especially this sounds exactly like me: I like puzzles and board state and cards that do pretty much one thing, where through the combination of one-things you can create a complex game.

Take Glissa Sunslayer for example, a black/green creature for 3 mana with first strike and death touch (which alone makes it one of the best blockers imo), it has 3 additional abilities from which you can choose one on impact. Like, what, why? This would be totally playable without these extra abilities. FS DT in itself is an extremely powerful combo, and I think there is currently no other card which has that out of the box. It can even create nasty combos by repeatedly resetting Sagas. Binding of the old Gods for example, destroy one permanent each round for the sole cost of dealing player damage. Though strangely, I don’t see it being played too often, so it seems to be fine.

I think the game would be more fun if the overall power level would be toned down a bit, but don’t expect that to happen.

Fun fact, I just conceded to a Peddler before my 2nd turn. I tried my luck a dozen times or so against that deck, which rarely succeeded and was never enjoyable. Yeah, skip.

< brawl unplayable >

Yes, Nadu is shameless. Though it has little impact on my matches, I rarely see it. I suffer much more from Persist Reanimators, and Goblin Bombardment with Ajani. Or this silly deck which mills itself, with creatures automagically returning to the battlefield.

Baral … can lead to hopeless situations, agreed. But I see Baral even less than Nadu. Could it be that counter decks came out of fashion, because aggro got too fast? Many players seem to play almost exclusively cards for 1 or max 2 mana.

Like I just lost after my first round to a Fireblade Charger with Sigarda’s Aid and a Colossus Hammer. Arena asked me afterwards wether I had fun. Mhm. Next match: Scholar of the Lost Trove gets Persist in round 3. Cool. After that: Elves swinging lethal in round 3.

Can you elaborate on Rusko, Clockmaker? Admittedly, I’ve been playing 2 or 3 Ruskos for a year or more. Before, I liked using Underrealm Lich with this frog monster which lets you draw a card whenever a land is put into your graveyard. I like recycling decks and fear Ashiok, guess I’m loss averse.

Imagine managing a popular game where tons of your playerbase hates aspects of it so much that they just concede to take a loss when they see a set of cards you design to be fun. This is the opposite of fun to me, and again I think it non-trivially contributes to negative player mental health.

Well put, I agree. I heard something when learning about game design: A mechanic, which gives something in your game a new ability, should be fun for the player using it, and for the players trying to counter it. Like maybe your warrior can raise his shield to block attacks, bot others have their abilities to penetrate shields, hit your feet or whatever. We should not just make the warrior invulnerable, with no counterplay possible. It might be fun for one player, but you want both to enjoy your game.

this mostly just seems like complaints about Magic itself

You’re right, I strayed from the title. Arena is where I experience MTG, I guess that’s how both got mashed together from my view.

What I still could have mentioned: Ropers, and generally unsportsmanlike behaviour. Like being a dick with emotes, being quick when you win but sluggish when you lose, abusing ‘Your Go’, spamming ‘Good Game’ when I still have or might draw a solution. I’ve also done all that, so I try not to judge too hard. Sometimes I think the whole experience is an exercise in emotion regulation.

decks that are too fast and decks that are too slow simultaneously

What I meant with fast: Decks which can kill in the first few rounds (regardless of how much time has passed

What I meant with slow: Players who physically take a long time to play (like roping on every step)

It can be both, which is the worst. Like a player scaling up his Scurry Oak in one of the first few turns to 100+ counters, while frequently taking breaks to clown around with emotes or whatever. I can’t really leave my desk, but also don’t want to surrender since I might draw a solution. Though this could be in 5 seconds or 10 minutes, who knows. Sometimes I feel this just isn’t worth my nerves and surrender anyway, even with a solution in hand.

I heard about the slow wildcard economy, so I guess you’re right. I have the opposite experience, but seen this point numerous times before; seems legit. I’ve been playing this game for many years (10?), sometimes almost all day. After some start phase, I could make whatever I needed from wildcards, without ever spending any real money. Currently, I have around 15 rare/mythic wildcards, which is a low count for me, since I just made another deck (with an accompanying post in this community). I guess it helps that I usually only play one deck, which rarely sees changes once it’s settled. Only vaguely I remember grinding for missing cards, an adventure which I did occasionally miss since then.

Seen the card many times, but never appreciated the art. So thanks for highlighting it.

Would be hell to see it as a meter-wide sprayed street art in a punky hood, or a dark club. 🤘😈

I also hate whenever it comes up in matches. I hate when red players make any move. It kind of burns.

Hehe, good point.

people need to read more code, play around with it, break it and fix it to become better programmers.

I think AI bots can help with that. It’s easier now to play around with code which you could not write by yourself, and quickly explore different approaches. And while you might shy away from asking your colleagues a noob question, ChatGPT will happily elaborate.

In the end, it’s just one more tool in the box. We need to learn when and how to use it wisely.

What’s up with the wiggeling, is the camera dangling from a balloon?

I guess if drones can fly into doors on moving targets, an observation drone should be able to hold relatively still.

Alright, thanks! I think I understand where you’re coming from, and can relate. I’m an ex-Christian, although I guess for ex-Muslims this process is a whole other beast.

And yes, I know exactly what you mean about culture and critique - as an leftwing, anti-theist leaning atheist, I often have to cringe about my peers. It feels like false romanticizing, like we did with native americans, or other falsly understood cultures. So many things which I despise in fascism are also present in strict Christianity and strict Islam. Although luckily, very few people take their religion seriously here. So our religious nutjobs are a fringe minority and can mostly be ignored.

Refugees welcome, but I hate it when they try to establish religio-fascist areas here, spewing hate and all their nonsense, occasionally killing someone. I mean, if you want to live like that, go back. If you like our way, be welcome.

Yeah, a sensitive topic which can easily trigger people. I try not to care about the boxes they try to put me in. And I absolutely love the freedom of speech we have here. I don’t want that be ruined by migrants who think they speak for Allah, nor by leftists who think every minority shares their values. Like I was one of them. In my youth, with coloured hair and ragged clothes, I was regularly beaten up by (almost exclusively) migrants. Created quite some cognitive dissonance, some effort to justify their deeds, like worse socioeconomic status blabla. Truth is, many people are quite “conservative”, naturally more so in less liberal countries of origin. And still, I vote and speak for open borders. Our society must find better ways than building walls. This issue is challenging European core values, with at least two ways to erode the values; we can lose them by allowing hostile subcultures to grow, or we can lose them by closing us off to the outside.

Good lord, 6 years. Poor Aisha. I guess my brain was happy to forget that detail.

So thanks again for this exchange. Stay safe.

Other person.

I think there are stories in the Quran or the other important texts (Hadid?) about their prophet marrying a 9yo. Although I’ve witnessed controversy around her exact age amongst people in /r/DebateReligion. Like some said it wasn’t too bad, she was almost 14 or so.

Now your turn, what do you think? And why did you want them not to google?

Right, I should have clarified that. No, not my measure, I agree with you on that. It was just some measure, which seemed better than “do the opposite of what others say”. Because actions matter more than words, or so.

The comic you posted speaks of communism, not socialism, so I went with that term.

I mean, both could be brainwashed. Or neither. It’s funny, but rationally pretty moot.

Just because many people say the same thing does not mean it’s false. And just because you’re the only who disagrees does not mean you’re right.

Or maybe it’s rather a matter of taste and opinion.

Though I don’t see many communist paradises where people try to migrate in masses. While many non-communist countries exist which have such a pull. Ah, silly me, that’s probably due to all the propaganda only.

Quality comment, well said.

I’m not sure (take that literally, please) wether both causes deserve to be treated as equals, but I can very much vibe with the general spirit of your comment. That’s what I had in mind when writing the last paragraph of my previous comment.

Haha, true! I had a similar thought:

“together strong” can be said by any group. Especially fascists, who very much value a sense of community and strength internally.

But really, it can apply to all kinds of governments (“Together for the king!”) and economies (like corporation, which is pretty much ‘together strong’ in capitalist speak).

So I think if one wants to make a point why their system is favorable over other systems, they should not emphasize the one point they all have in common, but highlight where and how it makes a difference.

I’ll just assume OP did that IRL. Memes are undercomplex.

Hey, I know a pretty similar bus stop in Hamburg, Germany: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SMa5unXew4uAfVtPA

Can confirm, it sucks to wait there. Hard to reach (always tempting to risk your life for catching the bus), noisy, stinky, plus ours has bicyclists zooming through the isle.

To optimize the intersection for car traffic. Or maybe rather to minimize signal wait times.

If pedestrians could take the shortest path, it would roughly double the size of the intersection in both width and height. Which then requires clearing times on each signal pass to be longer. Which ultimately makes everybody wait longer at the intersection, including pedestrians.

So, that is one possible explanation. I guess you didn’t really ask for one, and maybe I should also add that it’s just that; an explanation, not a justification.

This is like if Hezbollah bombed Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv. And then Hezbollah starts bombing israeli airports “pre-emptively” because “an israeli attack” (retaliation) is coming.

Yes, exactly. They had good reasons to assume the other side is angry and might do something violent, because they themselves just did something very violent to them! So to protect themselves, they deprive their opponents of means of retaliation. Pre-empting the retaliation.

Hitting someone and then hitting them again because you expect them to hit back does not seem very " self defensy" or “pre-emptive” te me.

I get you. I would totally agree if this was about a school dispute. However in war, there are a number of things which can be done in self defense or to pre-empt an enemy attack which might seem counterintuitive at first, like for example destroying your own infrastructure, or investing in weapons with the intent to never use them.

In war, an attacker can very well attack again to defend themselves and/or to pre-empt the enemy reaction.

If you could hire one of two generals to protect your country; one which considers pre-emptive follow-up attacks and one who would rather let the other side strike back because it seems fair, who would you hire?

You expect a military force to sit tight, not move, not shoot, while they know the enemy is about to attack?

Because, the enemy “is defending itself”?

I’d love to hear that rally speech with which you would motivate your soldiers to just eat incoming rockets without using the tools they have to prevent being attacked.

The strikes are only pre-emptive if we put on white-nationalism glasses and take away Lebanon’s right to defend itself. Israel attacked Beirut first.

I guess as always with language, there are many possible interpretations. Yours is one, that’s right.

To me, it came somewhat surprising to see you connected “pre-emptive” to moral judgements, or to the question who attacked “first” (which is a controversial and potentially infinite topic to track the actual honest true ‘first’ origin).

Another interpretation is just military doctrine. The best defense is a good offense. Who cares who started the fight.

In this interpretation, the IDF felt there might be an attack incoming, and prevented it’s adversary from doing so by striking first.

Much like Hezbollah (or any other military force) would gladly pre-emptively strike their foe to protect their own troops. Doesn’t say anything about who started the overall conflict or even who’s right.

You still have a point; by highlighting the reasons behind the strike, and painting it as a protective measure, it probably makes it easier for the reader to sympathize.