studio mujahideen posted:

the amount of people who have immediately conceded when I Make Disappear their 2-drop on the standard ranked ladder is wild. its so funny

for mono-r you just gotta save your counters for the poo poo that matters. their weak stuff will brick the second a terror hits the board, you need to be ready for their bolts

Serf posted:

Sometimes you brick, but my combo deck definitely did lose to those mono-w humans decks. The beatdown can be very hard to overcome, even when the combo comes together. I'm not running the most current list because I don't have the Stitcher's Suppliers or enough Eldritch Evolutions, but the deck does feel mostly consistent. Mulligans are super important, you gotta have Greasefang in the opening hand and a way to cast it. If I go down to 6 now I'm hoping for a Grisly Salvage to hopefully hit a Greasefang. Also I run 3 Liliana of the Veil now and forever because I cannot count the number of times I have drawn multiple Parhelions and she lets me dump them.

My opponent did take the time to inform me that Greasefang is actually not a combo deck and is a midrange reanimator deck (and that Lotus Field is the only "true combo deck in Pioneer") but I'm not sure I agree. But also quibbling over poo poo like that is a waste of time.

fadam posted:

How do you find the Lotus matchup usually?

sit on my Facebook posted:

hot dogs and calzone are both a sandwich

sit on my Facebook posted:

Greasefang is a Reanimator deck, Reanimator decks are combo decks, there's no such thing as "midrange" and hot dogs and calzone are both a sandwich, thank you for coming to my TED talk

Khanstant posted:

My monored combo deck is filled with one card combos, and creature cards with the haste combo that bring the opponents HP lower each turn.

Devor posted:

Burn is a 7-card combo with a lot of interchangeable cards.

Sickening posted:

Agreed. Burn isn’t a combo deck either.

Kashuno posted:

Burn is a control deck where you control the board by killing stuff

Kashuno posted:

Burn is a control deck where you control the board by killing stuff

VictualSquid posted:

I remember there being a canon story where Ashiok went to visit Elesh Norn while cosplaying as her. That would be the most funny option.
Canon wise, I think Karn actually makes the most sense. Considering that she keeps trying to reenact all those sexy queen of borg scenes from star treck whenever they meet.

quote:

Ashiok spread their broad hands outward as if to caress it all. "Beautiful, isn't it? I worked so very long on this particular masterpiece." Ashiok leaned forward slightly, their head cocked. "Your mind is a very . . . unique canvas, Elesh Norn. Very unique indeed."

"So this abomination, this filth, is indeed your doing?" Norn asked coolly.

"But of course." Ashiok smiled. "To be completely honest, I was not certain Phyrexians would be suitable for my art. One simply cannot create a masterpiece without a proper canvas."

"So you were testing us?" Norn said this with control, carefully calculated, even though her indignant fury had begun to boil. She refused to entertain the thought that the kernel of her lingering uncertainty might be perpetuating her doubt.

"Who else would have been a better test subject? You are the Mother of Machines, after all, are you not? Your mind . . ." Ashiok's voice trailed away, contemplative and vaguely perplexed. "It does not process fear the way human minds do."

"We are a Regent of Phyrexia," Norn said. "We are perfection personified. We do not fear." Until today, she would have never questioned that statement; it would not have been a lie to say she never doubted herself. But Norn refused to let that uncertainty surface completely. She forced authority into her voice, every ounce of deception and manipulation she had honed to defeat her rivals. She was not made entirely of organic material.

She was not weak.

She was not flesh.

She was not human.

Ashiok's smile only broadened. They glided in a broad circle around Norn, toes skimming the earth but not quite touching. "Oh, if that were true, I wouldn't still be here, would I?"

Ashiok rose into the air slowly, and the smoke curling from the tips of their horns began to flow downward, coiling around the human limbs and organs sprouting from the courtyard's flagstones. Norn's gaze followed the path of their ephemeral touch. There in the jumble of broken stone was a human head, growing through a broad crack like a fungus. It was a female with dark hair and light skin. White armor grew up around her chin and jaw like fronds. Her features were covered in the mire but, beneath the filth, something about her countenance seemed strangely familiar to Norn.

"I first encountered her when I was creating my art in Theros," Ashiok said, each word somehow menacing in its softness as their smoke caressed the human head's cheeks and brow. "Her name is Elspeth Tirel." Ashiok rolled the name through their mouth as if tasting it for the first time. "She caught my attention, and I sought her out in the Underworld. Her fear of Phyrexians was glorious. Simply breathtaking. How could my curiosity not have been piqued? What kind of artist would I be if I did not seek out such an opportunity to hone my craft, to test it on a being such as yourself? I simply had to find out. What would a Phyrexian nightmare be like?"

...

"You have blasphemed against us!" Norn's voice reverberated through the courtyard. She drew back her arm, preparing to obliterate Ashiok's wraith-like body, when the thing that would be Elspeth Tirel rose.

It heaved itself upright at Norn's feet, sloshing up and out of the earth with a thick, wet sound, rising from the nightmarish mire until it hovered facing her, spinal cord dangling like a rodent's tail. Ashiok's smoke wound around it rapidly, swelling and curving, shaping the very air into a tall, solid form corded with sinuous muscle and covered with pearly porcelain metal and a curving helmet. It was a mirror of Elesh Norn's sacred form.

Norn took a step back. Elspeth did the same. It was a twisted reflection of her own body, her posture that seemed suddenly, horribly, undeniably human. And there it was again, that tightness in Norn's throat, prickling the back of her neck, dropping deep into the center of her like a stone. She felt the urge to back away. To run. This was an abomination, not only of the Orthodoxy but of her. Mother of Machines, Regent. This was a twisted version of the Orthodoxy's future.

Elesh Norn did not want to call it fear, but as she watched Elspeth's hand rise to her mouth, as she watched those fingers so much like her own tremble, she knew that, yes, logically, that was how she too must have looked in that moment.

Impure.

Imperfect.

Impossible.

How could this planeswalker make her feel this way with their trickery, nightmares, and illusions? With a simple vision of a human woman sculpted to look like her, to mock her? She, Elesh Norn, who so masterfully bent her enemies to her will? She, who was the apex of Phyrexia?

With a deafening crackle and a blast of bright light, the needle-thin daggers prickling from Norn's body merged and formed a massive, deadly blade in her hand. With more power than would ever be necessary, she flung it into the nightmare version of Elspeth Tirel, slicing through her chest with such force that she flew across the courtyard, landing in a heap on the far side. A form clothed in her own white metal and crimson robes, still covered in human flesh, dead.

No, not dead.

Because it never was alive to begin with. It was all an illusion, a trick.

Norn turned to Ashiok, her internal workings pounding with this new and unfamiliar emotion, rage seasoning the fear she'd felt into something almost uncontainable. She prepared to unleash it all upon the planeswalker, but they were already high above the Basilica, darting backward with uncustomary speed until they were out of range, looking every bit as unsettled as Norn.

"You are quite the canvas, indeed, Mother of Machines." Ashiok spread their arms wide and bowed their head. "Another masterpiece."

Norn watched as Ashiok disappeared, gliding through the night sky. The veil of Ashiok's nightmare world lifted with their departure. The Phyrexians she had willed into existence dissipated. The broken flagstones resolved themselves once more into immaculate smoothness. The thick blood and unnatural plants quivered, hardened, and then crumbled to dust, easily scattered by the fresh breeze.

The body of Elspeth, still clad in Norn's armor, was the last to fade, clinging to corporeality until the regent took a step toward her. Elspeth's armor quaked and then crumbled away, fine as white sand, leaving her severed human head. The skin cracked. Lines thin as wisps of smoke formed around her mouth, spreading outward, dissolving her nightmare flesh from the inside out.

But just before the vision of Elspeth disintegrated, she opened her eyes and met Norn's gaze. She looked at Norn with such human pity, with such horrid sympathy, that Norn couldn't breathe.

When the nightmare had well and truly faded from the world, Elesh Norn walked carefully over the courtyard of the Basilica and touched the stones, clean now, pure and holy, where the thing that had been Elspeth Tirel had been birthed. She could not erase Elspeth from her mind. She could not unsee the pity there. She could not bear the thought of something so human unsettling her so completely.

And Elesh Norn knew then, with the same amount of conviction with which she worshiped the Machine Orthodoxy, that in order to purge this new emotion she was feeling, this fear and uncertainty, she would need to find the human, Elspeth Tirel, and rid the Multiverse of her.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Burn is a sandwich.

quote:

She refused to entertain the thought that the kernel of her lingering uncertainty might be perpetuating her doubt.

sit on my Facebook posted:

This is quite a sentence

PolishPandaBear posted:

Well this just showed up on Reddit. Wonder if it's real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtg/comments/11cwvzq/lotr_foil_sheet_found_in_garbage/

If so, The Ring mechanic sounds kinda interesting.

General Morden posted:

lol at people getting mad that aragorn is black

General Morden posted:

lol at people getting mad that aragorn is black

Strong Sauce posted:

PolishPandaBear posted:

Well this just showed up on Reddit. Wonder if it's real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtg/comments/11cwvzq/lotr_foil_sheet_found_in_garbage/

If so, The Ring mechanic sounds kinda interesting.

Issaries posted:

Spend 6 mana to get a 2/3 creature that needs to do combat damage to target player 5 times to win seems superjunk.

Issaries posted:

Spend 6 mana to get a 2/3 creature that needs to do combat damage to target player 5 times to win seems superjunk.

precision posted:

I don't concede to the first counter but when my opponent does actual nothing but counter my stuff 3 turns in a row I am definitely not having fun and I'm going to concede so they don't get to have fun either

Such a miserable deck to play against

CatstropheWaitress posted:

So like is everyone making a run on their local dump to find Magic cards. Is that the next great untapped gemstone caverns of opportunity and easy riches. There's gold in those trash mounds, poo poo even spoilers apparently.

General Morden posted:

lol at people getting mad that aragorn is black

Issaries posted:

Spend 6 mana to get a 2/3 creature that needs to do combat damage to target player 5 times to win seems superjunk.

PolishPandaBear posted:

JFC, I know. Was there this much uproar about black hobbits in Rings of Power?

whydirt posted:

A calzone is a quesadilla

sit on my Facebook posted:

This is quite a sentence

PolishPandaBear posted:

Well this just showed up on Reddit. Wonder if it's real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtg/comments/11cwvzq/lotr_foil_sheet_found_in_garbage/

If so, The Ring mechanic sounds kinda interesting.