Sam Collis

@GavinVerhey regarding brackets: would you say Bend or Break is MLD, making a deck bracket 4? As the brackets article refers to cards which "regularly destroy [...] four or more lands per player", I assumed not because it can't *consistently* hit *any* lands per player in EDH.

@GavinVerhey @KneelBeforeKyle For context, only 2 of my current decks are (technically) 4s, and they are comfortably two of my lowest power decks... 😂

@GavinVerhey @KneelBeforeKyle The bracket 3-5 descriptions still refer to strength/power. This seems misleading, esp. with unusual/suboptimal decks using individually powerful cards. Do brackets work better for codifying information to disclose pregame, rather than making objective comparisons between decks?

I've been really enjoying reading/watching/listening everything on brackets since yesterday! Good stuff. Overall the response has been far more positive than negative, and there have been lots of good suggestions! I do have one thing I think would be helpful to say... #wotcstaff

@ghirapurigears Have been tempted to put this in my Garna deck many times: lots of synergies, can res a bunch of creatures and then sac them all again with Garna's trigger on the stack, plus Garna gives it haste. But 11 mana is so much mana...

Today's #scryfallrandom is a mythic I have way too many copies of that I have yet to find a good use for

@ghirapurigears Krav and Regna is my BW tokens/lifegain deck, and it makes great use of Crested Sunmare ❤️

Alright folks, I'm tired of never finishing decks so I'm gonna crowd source this. Help me make a black/white deck that can make the best use out of Crested Sunmare! I don't care who the commander is, I just want bw lifegain.

@ghirapurigears I always use all non-matching basics (more art, and feels thematic for a singleton format) and always start with the set of (foil) basics from the set the commander was printed in. After that it gets tricky. Also, not sure what to do now that sets have ~5 different basic sets...

is there any worse moment in deck building than having to decide which basics to use?

@ghirapurigears Gotta be Kaalia for me. She's my go to (but not the worst) example of a commander which produces bad games simply by existing. Either you remove her before she ever gets to swing, or you lose. So either the Kaalia player doesn't get to have fun, or no-one else does.

What card just sucks and you hate it? Any format, any era, just a card that irritates the crap out of you, that makes you go why would you print this?

@munecatmusic Münecat video essay on Mr Beast pls? Find it fascinating and horrifying how openly he does *charity* purely because it nets him money and fame. Most people being publicly charitable at least pretend to do it out of altruism, or that the fame and tax loopholes are a side effect...

i think when ppl criticise mr beast for shit like this it always gets lost in the discourse of “well he’s using his money to help ppl i can’t believe you think this is a bad thing”

@Homofabulan @StagecoachSE Absolutely shocked that halving the number of bus services in the area didn't improve service. Who could have seen it coming?... 🤔

Trying to get to Mill Road Winter Fair but @StagecoachSE buses not turning up despite being on the board. Really loving the new and improved bus service!

The complete history of philosophers who you could picture eating a hotdog after it had fallen on the ground: 500 BC: Heraclitus 400 BC: Diogenes 390: Augustine 1050: Anselm 1500: Machiavelli (if no one was looking) 1750: Hume 1850: Marx 1900: Frege 1950: Sartre 2018: Žižek

@SamuelHBlack Great 🧵 btw. I think this is a really great distinction, because I don't think I would really call myself a competitive player (in EDH), but I am for sure a heavy EDH gamer. I don't necessarily want to win, but I want interesting gameplay experiences where winning is the goal.

@SamuelHOCollis That’s what I was talking about specifically I think.

I think the discourse around casual/social players and competitive players would benefit from considering a framing I haven’t seen discussed. It’s what I’ll call light gamers vs heavy gamers. 🧵

@andrebttx @SamuelHBlack Sandbagging a win etc. feels really bad to me, just feels like I'm wasting everyone's time and disrespecting my opponents. I'd rather build decks which are appropriately powerful for various tables than force myself to play wrong to make up for disparities

@SamuelHBlack Great thread. Also helps describe why I’m okay with powering down decks for EDH but strongly dislike playing soft against opponents. It just feels like a violation of my brain to not play optimally. But I don’t mind at all if the table itself is mid power for the social contract.

@SamuelHBlack Sometimes friends from competitive backgrounds bounce off EDH because they think the "social contract" means making intentionally suboptimal plays. IMO in multiplayer it's sometimes worth factoring in goodwill, trust etc. as soft advantages when optimising plays

@SamuelHBlack Curious if for you filtering social dynamics through strategic optimisation extends to EDH politics etc. as a kind of meta-strategic layer?

heard joke once. author submits article to academic journal. reviewer 2 says, “author fundamentally misunderstands this concept and would do well to consult the work of pagliacci.” author says, “but doctor…”

If only there were a discipline that could help us think clearly about normative issues like this…

@AntiClimaco @whitherutopia That's it, that's the worst made-up guy ever.

@whitherutopia Guy who gets Kant-pilled from reading the Anthropology in this class