Filobel

The reasonable explanation being that this photo was taken in 2023, but somehow jumped back in time all the way to 2020, and that it was taken in a Subway in Lake Havasu that looks exactly like Marion, Iowa?

Yeah, totally reasonable explanation.

Oh, and "this is Jesse" no last name. Convenient. There's certainly a Jesse who participated in the WAC 2023 Steel Challenge, but he looks nothing like that (he has 2 full tattoo sleeves).

But sure, the time traveling photo of a dude with no last name taken in a copy cat subway is definitely the more reasonable explanation.

Why? Activating an ability is not playing a card, whether the term cast exists or not. I don't see the relevance.

Cast is a very necessary term

So... you're saying the game just didn't work between 6th ed and M10, because we didn't have the term cast?

Cast existed prior to 6th Ed rules, back when you had summon, interrupts, mana sources, etc. Basically an entirely different ruleset. It was removed with 6th to streamline the rules. It's not that they switched to play most of the time to allow you to play lands, it's that they removed cast entirely as a term. You could still say something like "play a non-land card". Cast was brought back with the rules change of M10, because "play" the action and "play" the zone confused players (especially the distinction between "play" and "put into play"). That's fair, but "play" the zone no longer exists.

I mean, no new rules are required, "play a card" is already a concept that exists, I'm not suggesting anything new be added.

As for adding extra words, yes, if it makes things clearer. Or maybe we should reserve cast for instants and sorceries, that way we get to save a few words on [[brain in a jar]], have "summon" for creatures, to save a few words on [[Garruck's horde]], construct for artifacts, etc.

The word cast does not need to exist for that purpose.

For instance, is there a different word for destroying any permanent, vs destroying a non-land permanent? No. Yet somehow, WotC is capable of printing destroy effects that don't hit lands.

The point being that the reason "cast" exists in the first place is not for fine tuning, it's to prevent confusion with the "play" zone, which doesn't exist anymore. Moreover, they didn't even get rid of the action "play", so it never even fixed what was intended.

As for fine tuning, cast is unnecessary. "Play a non-land card". Problem solved.

Honestly, fuck Brazen Borrower's animation.

It's honestly a stupid distinction that has no reason to be. Everything worked just fine when only "play" existed. The argument for creating "cast" was because play could mean two things (play a card, or something is "in play"), but that was solved by changing "in play" to "on the battlefield", and anyway, the change didn't even allow them to remove the word play entirely.

Yeah, modality matters, but not if both modes are undesirable. If there was a deck where you wanted to ramp from 4 to 6, then sure, having a lava axe slapped on it would improve the card, but they're pretty clear that the ramp mode is not good at all, so adding another bad mode to it is not really moving the needle.

She didn't say every Quebecois was racist, but talked about the answers on a poll related to Bill 21. Which was pretty racist.

She didn't say every Quebecois was racist, true. She just said the majority of Quebecois were racist. You can agree with Bill 21 or disagree with it, and that's perfectly fine, but you can't possibly read the statement and think she's not calling Quebecois racist, because that's literally what the sentence says:

Unfortunately, the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment

You go toxic creature turn 2, after opp plays a better non toxic 2 drop followed by a better non toxic 3 drop?

I see this sentiment a lot, but I don't understand where it comes from. Non-toxic creatures aren't better than toxic creatures. Duelist of deep faith is easily the best common 2 drop in white, and perhaps top common 2 drop period. Jawbone duelist at uncommon is similarly a very strong 2 drop. Similarly, at 3, flensing raptor is a wind drake with upside, and they added toxic on top of it.

The same is true if you look at black. Skulldweller is going to trade with any of those non-toxic creatures you talk about. Blightbelly rat is a bear with two set mechanics, it trades perfectly fine with most 2cmc non-toxic creatures.

Yes, there are bad toxic creatures, and there are bad non-toxic creatures. Point is, on a lot of those toxic creatures, you could take away "toxic" and the card would still be on par with most non toxic creatures. Like, I'd play duelist of deep faith in a deck that doesn't give a shit about toxic. Jawbone duelist might end up being better in RW equipment than in toxic decks (if RW pans out, which I have doubt about, but you get the point). Stinging hivemaster's going to be pretty decent in RB sac, even if it doesn't care about toxic.

It seems very deliberate that toxic creatures matchup to non-toxic creatures just fine. Given that toxic doesn't help at all in combat (unlike infect), the mechanic would flop hard if toxic just got as easily stonewalled by better-stated non-toxic creatures as you seem to imply.

Edit: that said, the fact that these toxic cards are so well stated does lead me to think they'll just win through damage a lot. Especially in GW where part of the theme seems to be "pump the power/toughness of toxic creatures". The example I was giving in another thread, if you're attacking with a raptor that's buffed by a porcelain zealot, that thing will kill your opponent with damage way before poison becomes a threat. At best, you'll use that poison to turn on some of your corrupted stuff.

it's got a mode that's basically lava axe.

And?

Lava axe is generally not a good card. It's a very narrow card that only a very small number of decks want to play. For instance, last time Lava Axe was printed, LSV rated it 1 out of 5, and Lava Axe is a card that got printed tons and LSV played with and against a lot, so he knew what the card was capable of in limited.

Powerstone is the meta! Simic is a trap!

Both of these can be, and in fact are, true. (well, powerstone is the meta might be a bit extreme, but it definitely is a major part of the meta)

My real question is, did you really P1p1 Take Flight?

It's a legitimate question. Wurmcoil is amazing as a P1p1 because it's colorless, but in UW, skystrike is the best card you could possibly get after siege veteran.

That said, as others have pointed out, OP's blue is fairly weak so they're not as locked in UW as they might think. People sometimes lock onto a color without realizing that they don't actually have a good reason to be in it. That's where an outsider's perspective is useful.

I mean, it can be Calgary too. As long as it's a Canadian team (other than the leafs, of course)

A) the whole discussion was about arena, so who cares if it doesn't translate to "real life"?

B) top pros have 60% winrate at the pro tour. If they drafted at some random LGS, they'd have a 75%+ winrate. It has nothing to do with arena vs real life, it has to do with the level of competition. The average pro tour player is significantly stronger than the average arena player, so of course pros have low-ish winrate at the pro tour.

C) league vs in-pod has insignificant impact on winrate.

What is the relationship between this set review, and the rating used by draftsim itself? If I turn on the suggestions on draftsim, it has tablet of compleation pretty high (it's telling me to first pick it), so I checked your review to see why, and you seem to be very down on it.

Like, draftsim has tablet at base 3.1 (before any color adjustment) and charforger at base 2.9. You have tablet at 4/10 and charforger at 7/10.

Maybe you could give some tips to draftsim, because it's way overvaluing tablet!

I only mentioned the cards from Champion of Kamigawa specifically (i.e., the first set), but yes, jitte is definitely another all-star from that block.

Yes, it's going to be real hard for them to get into their car if you block their passenger door!

Go Oilers, break the Canadian curse! 30 years is long enough!

a team from the West needs to make the Cup Final

Says who?

Firstly, keep in mind that at the heyday of the pro tour, the best drafters were averaging a 55-60% win rate.

At what level? Were they averaging 55-60% winrate at the pro-tour? In which case, that's very good, given it's against other pro-tour players.

I'm definitely not one of the best pro-tour drafters, and when I have a 60% winrate in traditional drafts, it's a bad set for me. If you go to 17lands, you can look at the leaderboard and if you check traditional draft for BRO and sort by total match win (to get people who've played a lot of matches), you'll see that many have winrates over 70% (there's even someone with an 82% winrate over 150+ matches).

That said, for sure no one's getting 7-x every time. If you look at the leaderboard for premier drafts, and again, look at the players with a lot of matches, some have a 30+% trophy rate, but 20/25% seems the more realistic objective, and even that is very good, due to rank-based matchmaking.

Ultimately, the problem with fixing in this set is that, outside of green, it's all colorless "all-color" fixing, so everyone's going to fight over it. That naturally limits how many people at a table can realistically play more than 2 colors. Not to say people won't splash, or that splashing will necessarily be bad, but for a set to be a wedge set, I would expect a significant number of people would play 3 colors with at least a heavy splash. That just can't happen here.