it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully

I want to underline this. And ask the reader to put themselves in the devs’ shoes for a moment.

Usually, when people have strong opinions, like extreme political views, they try to further their goal wherever they can. To abstain from that desire, and create tools which can be freely used, even by their political enemies, requires a considerable amount of decency and deserves our respect.

Either this, or they value FOSS so much (more), that they still keep Lemmy open for everyone.

In a way, they support people from the opposite side of the political spectrum, by providing them their platform freely. Isn’t that exemplary in putting the fedi spirit above political differences?

What a Flotus. Only a real Flotus would be concerned about that sufficiently to make a public Flotus out of himself like that.

Makes sense, thanks for your insight!

I experienced the problems you mention and guess my question is answered now :)

However, here’s how I deal with it, my workaround:

On an empty board,

• if playing against black, I use -2. She is likely to get sacrificed, so I opt to replace the card worst case
• if playing against red or haste, I use +1. She might still be killed, but dealing 5 damage is some effort and requires one or two cards or actions for the opponent usually.

Against flying creatures, she offers some protection by giving reach. Ground creatures are usually tougher than birds, which can prevent further attacks. Or fail, if the reach blocker is removed.

In a creature disadvantage, I keep her in hand unless I desperately want to “super”-draw a creature instead.

The downsides are real, but kind of manageable. Maybe it depends on the rest of the deck, if flashing creatures is important enough. I thought of using that 4 mana blue enchantment, but that’s even more expensive (unless lucky in start hand).

You’re right, I think this whole post is about “Giving creatures flash”. If that’s my actual goal, is there a better way in MTG Arena Historic?

“The day starts at night” sounds silly because it seems to be a contradiction. But really, how else could it be?

Either, day starts at day … but then it was already day. Or, day starts at night … unless we come up with additional entities like dusk or dawn.

And since we haven’t introduced them yet, day has to start at night, as a necessity.

Of course the actual silly thing is that it’s still night right after day has started.

“Denmark made clear that they absolutely have eggs”, said a news person in German. Which is absolutely funny, because eggs and balls is the same word here.

“Dänemark hat klar gemacht, dass sie durchaus Eier haben.”

Deutschland 2025: Was ist noch Mitte, was ist schon rechts? | Die Anstalt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5K1Pq0C77Q

Woah. Fassungslos, wie sehr Arbeiter und Arbeitslose gegen ihre eigenen Interessen gewählt haben. Ohne diesen beiden Gruppen zu nahe treten zu wollen (denn so ist es nicht gemeint), die AfD ist halt schon die Partei der Dummen. Und wenn man bedenkt, dass die Hälfte der Bevölkerung dümmer ist als der Durchschnitt, steckt darin leider eine Menge Wahlvieh politisches Potential.

Ich glaube, um eine wehrhafte Demokratie im digitalen Zeitalter sein zu können, dürfen wir nicht so zimperlich beim Toleranz-Paradoxon sein. Faschisten müssen diskriminiert und eingeschüchtert werden, sonst schwirrt schnell im ganzen Diskurs nur noch deren braunes Zeug herum. Kein Bock auf Nazi-Bar.

Ja, ich dachte das wäre ein Instrument, “ähnlich” wie Xylophon. Mit der Verwendung in dem Satz da weiß ich auch nicht, was gemeint ist.

A browser of systems. Similar to the expansion planner.

It would be nice to see at a glance which system produces how much minerals/etc., both in potential and realized yield (stations built or not yet). When searching for the best systems for habitats (to get lots of whatever type of district I currently need most), it’s quite a pain to manually hover over each system from map view, and mentally keep track of what the current best was and where that was again.

Perfectionist/Meticulous. Anomalies can lead to all sorts of great things to happen. Mostly it makes your systems more valuable, also for habitats. And getting more of these dopabing moments feels inherently nice. Stellaris, my slot machine.

Makes me happy to hear this important feature is about to become reality! <3

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!

< 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.

Opponent played Ocelot Pride, which boosted my Doppelgang to the moon. Match ended in a draw, too many triggers to compute.

At this point, I could make infinite mana and infinite copies of any permanent on the battlefield, and create flash copies of any card in my graveyard, all at instant speed. Doppelgang on Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer breaks the game.

Screenshot

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.

seasonal patches like a video game’s balance

That makes much more sense, yes.

Your other thoughts are also good and welcome. Yeah, tracking what cards tournament players include is probably sufficient!

Are you familiar with the MTGO format Penny Dreadful?

I was not, thanks! Haha, yes, that is a pretty good implementation of the core idea, with very little overhead. It was funny to read about the implications this can have on real world market prices.

Spending (the equivalent of) 0.942 of a mana on something isn’t functionally different in almost all cases from spending 1 mana on it.

You’re right, it does not work so well with the current mana system. Because you still bring whole numbers of lands into play. When those lands produce 1000 mana, you still have either 1000 or 2000 mana, so the 0s are mostly redundant. It would still make a difference for carts which have a significant margin (so that you can play 3 unpopular cards for the cost of 2 regular, or 2 popular for the cost of 3 regular). But for small changes, as you say, it wouldn’t functionally change much.

I like the fine granularity of the cost-balancing approach. Though the binary ban/legalize mechanic of Penny Dreadful might be accurate enough.

Update: Casting Doppelgang with Flash and Casualty 2 is fun :D

I removed [[Smogbelcher Chariot]] and [[Blooming Cactusfolk]], since they were too situational/slow. Still climbing the ladder …

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.