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Angry Grimace
Jul 29, 2010

ACTUALLY IT IS VERY GOOD THAT THE SHOW IS BAD AND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T REALIZE WHY THAT'S GOOD IS AN IDIOT. JUST ENJOY THE BAD SHOW INSTEAD OF THINKING.

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

My computer got all new parts around February/March this year. MTGO is choppy as gently caress if you do anything stupid like going into your collection or starting a trade, and the in-game interface gets progressively slower the more you play. After about 10 or so games it becomes nearly unplayable and forces a restart. Certain buttons can take seconds to show any kind of response when you click on them. It's actually kind of mindboggling to think that modern high-resolution FPSes with graphical effects coming out of their asses run perfectly smoothly on this machine, but a program that needs to display 20 bitmaps on screen at the same time just breaks down.


Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Ostensibly Toshiro Umezawa from Kamigawa is supposed to be a black hero (with Takeshi Konda being a white villain), but I don't know enough about the storyline to tell. I think the closest we have to a black hero today is Sorin, and he's been part-white recently. Nevertheless, he is currently desperately trying to prevent a multiverse-shattering cataclysm, and even if that's at least in part self-preservation, he's putting himself at some real risk in fighting the Eldrazi so directly.

It really doesn't help that Magic is, primarily, a game about wizards magically punching each other. Zombies and demons and vampires are cool, so what are you going to do? Not have them in your game centered on wizards summoning awesome magical creatures? Not likely -- so you put them in the color that fits them thematically, and once again black looks like it's about nothing but death and evil and kicking puppies.

We've got a couple of horrible assholes in mono-white too - Heliod comes to mind.

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Lobsterpillar
Feb 4, 2014

Angry Grimace posted:

We've got a couple of horrible assholes in mono-white too - Heliod comes to mind.

Elesh Norn!

Fish Of Doom
Aug 18, 2004
I'm too awake for this to be a nightmare


Angry Grimace posted:

We've got a couple of horrible assholes in mono-white too - Heliod comes to mind.

Elesh Norn was the main new phyrexia antagonist as well.

I guess Xenagos kind of counts as a green-aligned villain.

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!

Fish Of Doom posted:

Elesh Norn was the main new phyrexia antagonist as well.

I guess Xenagos kind of counts as a green-aligned villain.

It would be neat if there was sort of like an 'anti-Phyrexia' block--by which I mean a set where there was a 'good' faction spread across all five colors, with clear examples of how each color could be 'good,' especially as represented by legends.

A block focusing on an anti-Eldrazi war would be the perfect time to do it, for obvious reasons. Since the latter might be coming up, hopefully we'll get the former.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

JerryLee posted:

It would be neat if there was sort of like an 'anti-Phyrexia' block--by which I mean a set where there was a 'good' faction spread across all five colors, with clear examples of how each color could be 'good,' especially as represented by legends.

A block focusing on an anti-Eldrazi war would be the perfect time to do it, for obvious reasons. Since the latter might be coming up, hopefully we'll get the former.

The Ally cycle was a little bit like that, wasn't it? Except most of the black allies were still pretty horrible people all things considered. Whenever Return to Zendikar comes around and we fight the Eldrazi off for good, maybe what you describe can come to pass.

Niton
Oct 21, 2010

Your Lord and Savior has finally arrived!

..got any kibble?
When I think of a black hero, I think "pragmatic". They're not someone who does the right thing because it's the right thing, but rather because it's in their self-interest for other people to be better off. They're willing to do bad things to get ahead, but not always at the expense of their ideals. Black just needs to carve a bit of its identity out from White, since the sort of pragmatism that involves being a good person tends to wind up B/W in nature.

rabidsquid
Oct 11, 2004

LOVES THE KOG


Wasn't Toshiro Umezawa considered the hero of Kamigawa block?

HMS Boromir
Jul 16, 2011

by Lowtax
I feel like they could get away with a professional bounty hunter / assassin sort of character for a mono black hero. Makes the world better because that's what people pay him top dollar to do, also he does it by murdering people in cold blood.

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!
On the other hand, what if an otherwise altruistic person decides that they want to apply the knowledge of necromancy to a noble goal like defending the village or whatever, so they read the appropriate book, go out and draw the black mana from a swamp, raise a zombie (maybe an enemy) from the ground and set it to guard duty? What color are they?

I think the last time I posed this hypothetical it was as part of a really acrimonious argument (I think it was with Zorak, but I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth) and as best I understood it, the argument on the other side was that you literally couldn't do that; that, if you didn't have a selfish personality in addition to the whole drawing black mana and saying the magic words, the zombie-raising spell would fizzle by fiat.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

JerryLee posted:

if you didn't have a selfish personality in addition to the whole drawing black mana and saying the magic words, the zombie-raising spell would fizzle by fiat.

It sounds like this should be a fairly easy thing to corroborate by checking what official sources say on the matter. However, I have a strong suspicion that the answer is... they're deliberately silent on it. Which kind of relegates that to "plausible but unfounded speculation". You could go ask Doug Beyer about it, but I think he would prefer not to give a definitive answer on the question of whether personality affects magic ability.

I think a part of the problem here is that the ideals of black (self-preservation, personal freedom, ambition) aren't traits that are traditionally associated with heroism. Traditional heroes don't do what they do because of their own ambition, they do it because they perceive it as their duty or appeal to some numinous principle of valor or justice. Worse yet, heroes are often expected to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, which a black protagonist would never do. Luke Skywalker doesn't fight the Empire in order to benefit personally, he does it because he feels it's the right thing to do somehow. Protagonists with black values tend to be anti-heroes. Han Solo is a black protagonist; he looks out for himself and his allies (e.g. Chewbacca) first and foremost, and doesn't fight out of duty or some higher ideal. That doesn't make him immoral, necessarily, but he does expect to be compensated for his work and doesn't shy from shooting first (:colbert:). But he's not so much a hero as an anti-hero.

Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Nov 7, 2014

xeose4
Sep 22, 2014

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Ostensibly Toshiro Umezawa from Kamigawa is supposed to be a black hero (with Takeshi Konda being a white villain), but I don't know enough about the storyline to tell. I think the closest we have to a black hero today is Sorin, and he's been part-white recently. Nevertheless, he is currently desperately trying to prevent a multiverse-shattering cataclysm, and even if that's at least in part self-preservation, he's putting himself at some real risk in fighting the Eldrazi so directly.

It really doesn't help that Magic is, primarily, a game about wizards magically punching each other. Zombies and demons and vampires are cool, so what are you going to do? Not have them in your game centered on wizards summoning awesome magical creatures? Not likely -- so you put them in the color that fits them thematically, and once again black looks like it's about nothing but death and evil and kicking puppies.

I completely skipped over Kamigawa as I was mesmerised by Innistrad, Zendikar and Ravnica, but I was told it was a good block. I'll try to get to it sometime so I can appreciate Toshiro.

The thing is that if they had put into Black the effort that they put into giving Blue all sorts of crazy things, you can easily reflavour Black's creatures so that they're neutral (and can therefore be good or evil) instead of puppy-kicking evil. If you make undead retain the personality they had in life, that's a poo poo-ton of creatures with all sorts of goals right there. You can then have demons be less about evil for its own sake and more about being the "exterminators" of the multiverse. Where angels protect, demons destroy (for a good reason!). You call upon an angel to shield you from harm, but you call upon a demon to take out a tyrant that's oppressing a nation, or against the Eldrazi, for example (and you can have demons and angels that do something they aren't supposed to do, like angels with removal or demons with protection from X, to add some colour bleed).

All I'm saying is that you could've kept Black mostly as-is and give it some non-evil flavour if you really wanted to, which is why I'm disappointed they apparently never did.

EDIT:

JerryLee posted:

I will say that what they've done with Red as opposed to, like, fifteen years ago gives me some real hope. Regardless of how well it's come across mechanically, emphasizing Red's creative and freedom-loving side in the lore (the latter in a slightly more developed fashion than 'lol I'm a barbarian who does what he wants') has happened a lot more often, especially in the past few years. I loving loved that in New Phyrexia, Red got to be the relatively 'good' guys. I think they could do something similar with Black if they put their minds to it.

Completely agreed, all they need is effort.

xeose4 fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Nov 7, 2014

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!
I will say that what they've done with Red as opposed to, like, fifteen years ago gives me some real hope. Regardless of how well it's come across mechanically, emphasizing Red's creative and freedom-loving side in the lore (the latter in a slightly more developed fashion than 'lol I'm a barbarian who does what he wants') has happened a lot more often, especially in the past few years. I loving loved that in New Phyrexia, Red got to be the relatively 'good' guys. I think they could do something similar with Black if they put their minds to it.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
On the topic of blue, how many mono-blue heroes are there? I'm trying to think of blue values that gel well with heroism, but I can't think of any. Blue more than any other color seems to be preoccupied with understanding, puzzling out and subtly manipulating than actually going out and performing heroic feats. Blue feels too passive for that. That inward focus seems to be something blue shares with black.

For that matter, what would a good mono-blue villain be? Jin-Gitaxias is I guess about as evil as most Phyrexian praetors, and I'm not really familiar with his story. But it seems like his ideals have more to do with propelling the Phyrexian race towards perfection through techno-magical means rather than through evolution (c.f. Vorinclex), which is not in itself a particularly villainous goal. At least, y'know, if you ignore the whole "Phyrexia is a horrible blight on any plane it touches" bit. But, then again, I guess most villains wouldn't consider themselves villains in the first place. So is the blue villain just someone too caught up in their obsessions to respect others?

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!
Memnarch is pretty clearly a blue-aligned villain in my book, although frankly what exactly his motivations/character were is hazy enough in my mind (and has probably actually been changed since I last thought about him in Mirrodin block) that I'm not 100% sure what to extrapolate from that.

A confounding factor I'm encountering in trying to think about it is that they love making multicolored legends/characters so much that there's a limited number of actual monocolor (mechanically speaking) characters to extrapolate from. I keep thinking of 'blue' villains only to realize that they're actually UB or something, and it's not always clear how much of the villainy is in the blue specifically.

xeose4
Sep 22, 2014

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

But, then again, I guess most villains wouldn't consider themselves villains in the first place. So is the blue villain just someone too caught up in their obsessions to respect others?

For what I've been reading, Esper seems to be pretty villainous, with the whole "forced evolution" thing where they turn you into an android whether you like it or not. You can say it's the W and B in it, but I think that's a very U thing in itself. U doesn't have much respect for the individuality of others, since it's all about control (a thing it shares with W).

A U villain can easily be found in any anti-intellectualist story where science is the root of all evil and the cause of all problems. Every single time a scientist has uncovered things Man Was Not Meant To Know, made a deadly virus, awakened the dead, changed someone's mind or body without their consent and/or callously experimented with people, that's a blue villain the story is talking about.

Most people would say that black villains are U/B, U/G or U/R, but those are specifically different. U/G villains are those deterministic scientists who summon some sort of deadly creature and then "give themselves up" to them because they're the "apex predator" or "the perfect specimen". U/B villains go beyond the cold disregard for life that the mono-U villain has, and tend to be more focused on their personal profit (like the bad guy from the first Resident Evil movie that deliberately breaks one of the vials with the virus to infect the entire laboratory even though he was pulling off his theft without a hitch). U/R villains are the kind to ignore safety protocols and experiment on themselves (Jekyll is the ur-example) or just be careless with their experimentation and end up generating massive destruction.

The mono-U villain is probably someone like William Birkin from RE2, who is completely uncaring about anything but his research and only becomes a literal monster when his research is taken away from him. In fantasy-specific cases, you can imagine the mono-U villain as any mage or scholar whose research proves dangerous but refuses to abandon it.

Tonfa
Apr 8, 2008

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

Blue villains are omnipresent. There are at least a couple of "Everything you did was according to my plan :smug:" cards in every block.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
Those are all some pretty good blue villains. What about blue heroes? Is any hero that uses The Power Of :science: a blue hero? My first thought was Doc Brown, but he's clearly U/R rather than monoblue and he's more of a mentor anyway (Marty is the hero in that story). Sherlock Holmes, perhaps?

AlternateNu
May 5, 2005

ドーナツダメ!

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

On the topic of blue, how many mono-blue heroes are there? I'm trying to think of blue values that gel well with heroism, but I can't think of any. Blue more than any other color seems to be preoccupied with understanding, puzzling out and subtly manipulating than actually going out and performing heroic feats. Blue feels too passive for that. That inward focus seems to be something blue shares with black.

For that matter, what would a good mono-blue villain be? Jin-Gitaxias is I guess about as evil as most Phyrexian praetors, and I'm not really familiar with his story. But it seems like his ideals have more to do with propelling the Phyrexian race towards perfection through techno-magical means rather than through evolution (c.f. Vorinclex), which is not in itself a particularly villainous goal. At least, y'know, if you ignore the whole "Phyrexia is a horrible blight on any plane it touches" bit. But, then again, I guess most villains wouldn't consider themselves villains in the first place. So is the blue villain just someone too caught up in their obsessions to respect others?

I would probably say Sun Quan is a hero. Maybe? Venser has a mono-U card, but he's been shown to really be U/W. Arcum Dagsson?

xeose4
Sep 22, 2014

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Those are all some pretty good blue villains. What about blue heroes? Is any hero that uses The Power Of :science: a blue hero? My first thought was Doc Brown, but he's clearly U/R rather than monoblue and he's more of a mentor anyway (Marty is the hero in that story). Sherlock Holmes, perhaps?

Pretty much every crime/medicine show has a U or U/W hero (the U hero is in it for the truth/science/puzzle, while the U/W hero is in it for using science to keep the community safe). I would say Gregory House is the epitome of the U protagonist, given that the show doesn't shy away from showing his uncaring and rear end in a top hat side, though also brings up his virtues every so often. He's not selfish enough to be U/B (though the show does play on blurring the lines between U and U/B to see how far he's willing to go to solve the puzzle of the week), and not erratic enough to be U/R (he has a method, after all, and it's very orderly), and his blatant disrespect for authority prevents him from being U/W.

Blue heroes are typically not protagonists unless the story is very mental (see: the crime/medicine/thriller genres), they typically tend to be allies/mentors of the protagonist or simply a part of the cast ensemble. This is, of course, because Blue is typically a passive colour that requires a specific kind of storytelling to work, and can rarely hold the weight of the plot alone (this is, ironically, something that it shares with Green, who likes to leave things As They Are unless threatened). White can be reactive or proactive ("defend our lifestyle" vs "we must do something about this thing we don't agree with!"), while Red and Black are all about proactivity.

I'd say Red protagonists are very common in genres such as action, adventure and romance. Comedy and horror tend to be about things happening to the protagonists, so any colour fits (though there's definitely a part of comedy that's all about 'person attempts to do something with hilarious consequences', which is where Red shines).

EDIT: You could argue that Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit is a U/W protagonist that is lured by the forbidden (going off on an adventure is the epitome of Red, which is the enemy of both U and W), and shaking off his rigidity in the pursuit of curiosity can be seen as abandoning W and becoming mono-U, but this is a stretch. At any rate, it's interesting to think of U protagonists that aren't scientists, doctors, scholars or mages, and are instead intelligent people with a strong curiosity and desire for knowledge.

xeose4 fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Nov 7, 2014

Samael
Oct 16, 2012



My decks are currently "I hate fun" decks.

Standard: Jeskai Ascendancy Combo, beginning to really like the deck- it is actually very difficult to pilot and there are so many nuances to it compared to "slam siege rhino, your turn", been tinkering it to the heroic version lately to little success. Used to have little timmy's green devotion deck until I used the parts to make a second modern deck because Nissa's price definitely isn't going to stay that way.

Modern: I have two decks U/R Cruise Delver for when I want to lightning bolt people and I just finished UW Tron, so I don't have a big opinion on the deck yet but it features my 4 favourite cards in modern, emrakul, iona, elesh norn and gifts ungiven so I wanted to give it a try.

It's the format I have least experience in (apart from legacy but theres no community for it here) and the experience I have had has been very interesting and there are a very extensive range of archetypes in my playgroup (pod, twin, bogles, infect, tron, storm)

Legacy: I did have breakfast burrito made for a while, but no one here plays legacy, absolutely no one, so I quickly dismantled that.

EDH: Hanna Ship's Navigator (her judge foil is sooo cool, then just built around her from there) UW Pillow Fort/Group Hug (Pillow Hug, yay!) deck, featuring lots of howling mine effects, propaganda effects, generally gets everyone to do their most timmy-ish thing until I combo them out or slap a lightning greaves on a blightsteel colossus. However a lot of the cards are currently being used for UW Tron, so I might just use the 2014 commander decks and try to expand on those (A land destruction titania deck sounds fun!) for now.

Samael fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Nov 7, 2014

Fingers McLongDong
Nov 30, 2005

not eromenos
Fun Shoe
Delver of Secrets is the current antagonist of MtG.

AlternateNu
May 5, 2005

ドーナツダメ!
Sure, I'll hop on the deck train:

Standard: B/W good stuffs. Similar to the list Brad Nelson played a couple weeks ago. I cut the lands down by one and diversified the removal suite and walker compliment a little. It is amazingly consistent and has so much life gain that I can damage race pretty much every deck out there.

Modern: I technically don't have the deck fully built, but I have all the expensive parts to modern burn. I just need a couple Grim Lavamancers and most of the pre-Innestrad commons.

Legacy: gently caress that noise. Give me a free mana base, and I'll think about it.

EDH: Jor Kadeen and Muzzio, Visionary Architect. Jor is my"70%" deck for when I don't expect to go against super try-hard decks. Muzzio is my A-tier and for me, is more of a game of how many artifacts can I poo poo out by the time the group hates me out than anything else. It is near impossible to play politics with the deck and still have it do it's thing. Fun poo poo, though.

Spiderdrake
May 12, 2001



Delver of Secrets is currently this laughing scientist who is going on a gameshow cruise while electrocuting the contestants on the boat. Like Arcade, only he turns into a bug randomly through the show.

More seriously, are the commander decks likely to be more balanced in demand this year, or will the white/red ones be sought after while the others shelfwarm bumblebee style? I'm not a good judge of legacy or commander cards, but they look much better this year?

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

xeose4 posted:

EDIT: You could argue that Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit is a U/W protagonist that is lured by the forbidden (going off on an adventure is the epitome of Red, which is the enemy of both U and W), and shaking off his rigidity in the pursuit of curiosity can be seen as abandoning W and becoming mono-U, but this is a stretch. At any rate, it's interesting to think of U protagonists that aren't scientists, doctors, scholars or mages, and are instead intelligent people with a strong curiosity and desire for knowledge.

Bilbo strikes me as more red than blue, because as you say, going off on an adventure is very red. I think he starts off as mono-white, preferring the quiet, stable community life in Hobbiton to this pile of rowdy dwarves that have suddenly invaded his home. But as soon as they leave, he finds that something has sparked within him - the lust for adventure. Practically on impulse, he rushes after the Company and goes on the adventure anyway. I think that rebellious impulse is red, but I can't really see much blue in it. If Bilbo had sat down and analyzed the situation and made a considered decision to join the Company, then that would've been blue.

Criminal investigators being blue makes a lot of sense. Many tend to embody blue's unflattering sides too. Sherlock Holmes (and his derivatives, like Gregory House) is cold and unemotional, Hercule Poirot is arrogant and narcissistic, Adrian Monk is obsessive-compulsive...

Perhaps Spock would be another good example. Analytical, logical to a fault, and very unemotional. Perhaps the same could be said of Data from TNG (or perhaps he's just a colorless artifact? :haw:). I wonder if Raoden (Elantris) could be considered blue as well. He spends most of the book concerned with unraveling the mystery of the Aon and discovering the cause of the city's downfall. He's not really doing it for anyone else, he just wants to understand what the hell has happened to him.

bhsman
Feb 10, 2008

by exmarx
Spock is a very good example of a Blue protagonist, I agree.

xeose4
Sep 22, 2014

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Bilbo strikes me as more red than blue, because as you say, going off on an adventure is very red. I think he starts off as mono-white, preferring the quiet, stable community life in Hobbiton to this pile of rowdy dwarves that have suddenly invaded his home. But as soon as they leave, he finds that something has sparked within him - the lust for adventure. Practically on impulse, he rushes after the Company and goes on the adventure anyway. I think that rebellious impulse is red, but I can't really see much blue in it. If Bilbo had sat down and analyzed the situation and made a considered decision to join the Company, then that would've been blue.

Bilbo is actually very Blue throughout the whole story. Before the company arrives he's very fastidious, remembering a lot of useless details of the town, his family and the possessions of his house. His W is what keeps him from being a stereotypical bookworm. I completely agree that the decision to join the company is completely R, but that doesn't mean he is R himself. Like I said, I chalk that up to the allure of the forbidden, like a W person being making a single selfish choice, a B person developing affection for someone and not betraying them when it would be convenient, or a G person being at once abhorred and fascinated by scientific research that goes against the laws of nature. Being tempted by what is not part of us is a common aspect of human psychology, though it usually tends to be more evident when it comes to R tempting the other colours into being emotional, because that's something we can all identify with.

To me, Bilbo consistently displays U qualities throughout the story, from trickery to cunning and curiosity. His main drive (and the reason the R-like decision happens in the first place) is because his blueness wants him to explore. Not for any emotional satisfaction (which would be R), but to satisfy his curiosity and gain knowledge of how things are outside The Shire. And what does he do when he comes back? He sits down and writes a long-rear end book about everything he learnt. It doesn't get any more Blue than that.

Those other Blue examples seem to fit pretty well, but I think there's room for coloured protagonists/antagonists outside the stereotype (like a U hero that isn't the scholarly stereotype).

Bread Set Jettison
Jan 8, 2009

Urza was a good blue protagonist

LifeLynx
Feb 27, 2001

Dang so this is like looking over his shoulder in real-time
Grimey Drawer

neetengie posted:

Use KMC Hyper Mattes, they're the greatest sleeves of all time.

They're the product of 20 years of card sleeve evolution, and they're fantastic. The only downside of them is that they come in 80-card packs instead of 100.

Ironically, the best sleeves ever came out soon after Magic was released, and sadly they're out of production now:



Aside from being a magnet for thumbnail marks, these sleeves last forever if you treat them right. I still have sleeves from ~20 years ago that I occasionally use for casual drafts.

Madmarker
Jan 7, 2007

Bread Set Jettison posted:

Urza was a good blue protagonist

Urza isn't quite blue, he leans more towards white than anything else, even though all his good cards are blue. His goal is to stop the phyrexians because they will destroy everyone, however he admires them and wants to learn everything about them. He is right on that self-sacrificing hero/intellectual nutjob line. He has a very blue methodology, study, learning and the like, but his goals and ambitions are often white in nature. What he is concerned with is the greater good, and his tools are group organization and leadership (very white traits) and artifice. You can also make an argument that there is some red in there as he is very motivated by vengeance for what the phyrexians did to his brother, so I would say he is probably UW or UWR. I believe in one of the books Serra mentions that Urza is white in nature, but I can't quote which one off hand.

Madmarker fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Nov 7, 2014

Pussy Snorkel
Sep 12, 2008

With the Pussy Snorkel, any man can be a dive master.

Angry Grimace posted:

I actually don't like the Burning Wish package very much. I ended up just moving it back to Oath Storm with the full Force of Will package. I know LSV is very high on running Oath without any Forces but I just hate playing Vintage games without Force of Will.

That's why I switched from Oath storm to Permission Oath. I run Force, Swan Song, Misstep, Misdirection...it's a glorious package.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

BJPaskoff posted:

They're the product of 20 years of card sleeve evolution, and they're fantastic. The only downside of them is that they come in 80-card packs instead of 100.

Ironically, the best sleeves ever came out soon after Magic was released, and sadly they're out of production now:



Aside from being a magnet for thumbnail marks, these sleeves last forever if you treat them right. I still have sleeves from ~20 years ago that I occasionally use for casual drafts.
What? These were always the shittiest sleeves shy of penny sleeves, and even those held together better. No matter what, I'd have a sleeve split on me when shuffling. I have only one deck still sleeved in them and that's because I hardly ever play the thing.

TicalStal
Apr 23, 2004
I promised America to the Fuhrer!
A little late to the deck train:

Standard: I currently play Abzan Midrange because I played Junk and GB "dredge" a bunch last standard so had most of the cards. (Also because of my trading habits I tend to only want to keep powerful cards that fit in multiple archetypes so it means I play jund type decks more often than not)

Modern: Not really focusing on this format since none of the stores I go to really support it and don't want to test and brew if there's potential for major shakeups in a few months with banning(s). In the past, I've played UWr, kiki pod, RUG Twin and jund/junk so those will probably be my choices going forward.

Legacy: Currently playing miracles for NJ. Also have deathblade, death and taxes, ur delver and 12 post ready.

Vintage - none unless you count mtgo which I've messed around with a pyromancer gush deck here and there

jassi007
Aug 9, 2006

mmmmm.. burger...
What do you play train.

Standard: Currently RG monsters but I'm thinking of shipping it for more modern/legacy staples.
Modern: Affinity & GR Tron. I have a ton of modern staples to throw together several decks. Me and delver went on a few dates recently but it didn't work out. I got seasick on our treasure cruise.
Legacy: I have the pieces for legacy affinity, I've never actually put it together and played it. Would like to build something else, MUD maybe but ugh.
EDH: Currently Melek storm, it has done really well. Almost finished with Esper artifacts, not really a combo deck, probably going to use Sydri as my commander, but I have Sharuum as well.

Cactrot
Jan 11, 2001

Go Go Cactus Galactus





Standard: Currently playing Mardu Midrange because Rabblemaster, Crackling Doom and Wingmate Roc are awesome.

Modern: Storm is the only deck I have for modern right now, I like to play it because I like to play my spells and playing all my spells at once seems like the best way to get that done (also I'm a jerk who likes making my opponent wait). I'm slowly building a modern UG infect deck and have most of the things I need for UR delver.

Legacy: I don't get to play this because things are expensive, though I can re-use a whole lot of modern infect cards so all I'll need are trops and forces.

Bread Set Jettison
Jan 8, 2009

All I play is limited :shrug:

Zoness
Jul 24, 2011

Talk to the hand.
Grimey Drawer

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Those are all some pretty good blue villains. What about blue heroes? Is any hero that uses The Power Of :science: a blue hero? My first thought was Doc Brown, but he's clearly U/R rather than monoblue and he's more of a mentor anyway (Marty is the hero in that story). Sherlock Holmes, perhaps?

Teferi is a blue protagonist. He uses his trickery to get things done to save continents and stuff. Also chocorojo wrote a pretty neat summary of the Kamigawa books but I don't remember what the link was but how "easily" a color is aligned with good or evil is more or less based on inherent bias. Anyway that's one of the really dumb things about Jace is once they characterized him they started being a lot lazier with making cool blue good guys. Venser in time spiral block was a really cool dude. Arcum Daggson was also neat but he's kind of an idiot.

Although I believe Red/Green is the color combination that is antagonized the least and Theros Block is of course a very recent example of a Red/Green main antagonist.

Toshi's one of the most interestingly characterized black-aligned protagonists though. He gets his powers by making deals with the Myojin of Night's Reach, who favors him as a Champion since he's clever and self-serving (I'd argue it's kind of like how Athena favors Odysseus in the Odyssey). He spends a lot of his time getting revenge on people and protecting his own hide but because Kamigawa is so messed up all of these actions are done against people who are even bigger jerks making him basically the nicest person on the plane that doesn't become a god at the end of the story. Kamigawa's overall story reminds me of the Jin Yong wushu novel about how almost all the structured parts of society have become corrupt so the protagonist is someone who more or less rejects most of these and that's one of the better frameworks for a black-aligned protagonist although red is probably the more obvious color here.

Also I think Heidar is a really cool blue antagonist.

Zoness fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Nov 7, 2014

LordSaturn
Aug 12, 2007

sadly unfunny

What do I play:

Standard: I played Tempered Steel and I played Pod. I almost built an aggro deck for this standard, but then decided not to, and made all my money back on those $5 Rabblemasters.

Modern: Loamshift. I still have R/W prison but I would need to renovate it and I have yet to decide how.

Legacy: Esper Robots. It's bad and I don't care, I killed a guy last weekend in a game where I didn't even bother dropping a land. Currently Esper for Stoneforge Mystic and Ethersworn Canonist, but might go back to Grixis for Galvanic Blast and Shrapnel Blast.

Bread Set Jettison
Jan 8, 2009

Urza was disguised as noted blue card, Blind Seer. He was probably Blue-White, but he was pretty fricken blue.

Terrible Horse
Apr 27, 2004
:I
Modern: UR Delver Cruise lol
Standard: MonoB beatdown, and I have everything for UB control except the vaults and like 1 or 2 Digs. I might wait for the 3BB wrath because I cant justify paying 12 tix for a Vault.

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Errant Gin Monks
Oct 2, 2009

"Yeah..."
- Marshawn Lynch
:hawksin:

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

The Ally cycle was a little bit like that, wasn't it? Except most of the black allies were still pretty horrible people all things considered. Whenever Return to Zendikar comes around and we fight the Eldrazi off for good, maybe what you describe can come to pass.

Please no return to Zendikar. The last thing I want to see is

Emrakul, Time Enraged - 20 (doesn't matter he will be cheated into play)
Annihikator 3000000
Take 6 turns when a emrakul enters the battlefield, you cannot lose the game.
Emrakul has protection from all other players and can't be countered.
40/45

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