Lurker > pyresword

Oh my god I actually managed to go 7-2 in day 2 of the qualifier. Wasn't really even expecting to make day 2 but I am beyond excited right now.

Won in an incredibly janky way in the final game to. Was dead on board for sure next turn and was top-decking, and I topdeck Heartless Act which let's me send my own Thieves Guild Enforcer to the grave, bring it back with Lurrus, and get the last mill triggers to deck my opponent. Got incredibly lucky all-around in the final set but whatever. I guess I also got semi-poor luck with opening hands and had to mulligan twice in game 1 and once in game 3, so I'll take what I can get.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Faceless Haven can at least be taken out with Heartless Act, so it's a bit easier to answer than Crawling Barrens. Field of Ruin still probably good but I'd be hesitant in a deck where the mana is difficult.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

When I was playing mono white on ladder I generally preferred aggro matchups, but it felt fine vs control also. To be fair though, I played mainly against Sultai Yorion builds which probably fares worse than Esper Yorion. The matchups I feared the most were probably Rakdos, the mid/low tier Mono Black enchantment deck that just has an insanely good matchup here, and maybe Rogues, though that one feels about even to me.

I think Faceless Haven is quite good by the way, so I'd recommend that plus snow lands if you have access to that.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Wasn't expecting to win a match on day 2 off of a last minute choke by my opponent but I guess I will take it? In fairness to my opponent, the choke was them bouncing my Lurrus with Brazen Borrower in response to a spell, and I'm guessing they thought the spell I cast was from my hand rather than it actually being that I had just used Lurrus's effect to cast from my grave, and this is an issue that's sometimes hard to tell what's going on with the MTGA client/interface. I'm not 100% sure it was a good play either way, but there are some hands I could potentially have had where the play would have made sense in that case. But whatever, we take those. Currently 2-0.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Aw yes. Don't know how much anyone else here cares about competitive constructed but I qualified for day 2 of the Mythic qualifier tournament on MTG Arena that was today.

Went 5-0 in matches and 10-1 in games vs aggro decks. (3 mono white, 1 mono red, and 1 Naya combo which I guess you could argue isn't an aggro deck but whatever.) So eat your heart out everyone who says rogues can't keep up with aggressive decks. Ended at 7-1 with my only loss being to a 60-card Sultai Ultimatum deck, though I did make a pretty bad misplay in game 2 to lose the set.

Also had some new-ish sideboard pieces that I never really had time to test myself beforehand, but it managed to come in clutch during the real thing so that was nice.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

"Interesting" is certainly one way to describe the lyrics of that song.

I find the vocalist of the band a bit hit or miss myself but I do really like him in this song.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Also other comment: I hadn't been playing ranked earlier in the season, but I am now and I'm surprised how often I've encountered Tibalt's Trickery even in Diamond.

I have to imagine aggro is the best matchup for the deck, and even in this case it's managed to be embarassingly bad. They've actually managed to hit something with Tibalt's Trickery in 4 out of 5 games I've played so far, but they still lost 2 of those 4. Neither turn 2 Kiora Bests the Sea God nor Turn 3 Dream Trawler is good enough, apparently. (To be clear those were different games. Getting those 2 out in the same game would probably be enough against anything)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

For the record I'm still convinced Rogues is the strongest deck in the current standard format.

Most recent tournament results certainly do not support that claim.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Been playing mono white aggro in Standard lately.

For a lot of reasons it irritates me that this deck is good, but it has been working out pretty well.

I will say I seriously underestimated the potential of Halvar, God of Battle. Maybe it's because most of my experience in this standard meta is playing decks with removal and counterspells, but in creature vs creature matchups this thing is an absolute house.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

The Mana Sword posted...

Im glad they finally started doing limited ones

Exactly the opposite of my reaction haha.

But whatever. I'd rather have Constructed but I enjoy Limited well enough also and I like playing in events regardless. Also was able to enter using Gold so it's not like I really sunk money into the entry fee either. I suppose also even if I do prefer constructed, the fact that there's a variety is probably good no matter what.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Played in the Arena Open today which for some reason had Kaldheim Sealed for the format. Wasn't super happy with my card pool but I did manage to go 5-3. In retrospect I might have been underrating how I pulled a bit though. My rares weren't great outside of Doomskar and Showdown of the Skalds, and I didn't have a way to easily play the latter since my red pool was just terrible. However I did get 2 Vega the Watcher and 3 Ravenous Lindwurm, which turned out to be quite good at the end of the day.

As you might imagine, ended up running green/blue/white control focused on the aforementioned cards. The combination of evasive threats and big threats meant I was able to find a way to push damage through against most decks. I had great card draw with 2xVega+Sarulf's Packmate+Behold the Multiverse+2-3 other foretell cards, and for more aggressive decks I had several ways to gain life plus Doomskar is obviously an instant "stabilize the board".
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Gonna go with this for relaxing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckkxi-UH5lw

Skipped yesterday but at least for me Final Fantasy just isn't the series I go to if I want music that's going to pump me up.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Man there is one particular song I nominated that I thought for sure you would not like. Seems it has (almost, thus far) managed to avoid the bottom 25 though so maybe I was wrong? My ability to predict rwlh taste continues to be basically zero, apparently.

I guess even if you don't like the song as a whole I could see you maybe REALLY liking the first 20 seconds or so, so maybe that counts for something? I don't, I guess we'll see.

For the record, I am talking about 1, 2 Fanclub. Here's a bunch of pointless text just so you can't tell whether I was talking about a song with a long or short title. (Do not highlight if for some reason you want to preserve the MYSTERY. Also I added a bunch of extra words behind the spoilers so you can't tell from the length in case that matters.)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

LeonhartFour posted...

Day 24: Song That Makes You Feel Sad

*votes Someday the Dream Will End*
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Just realized I wasn't clear but my Cold Steel post above this was responding to Leon. BK I hope you didn't read that since there's Act 3 spoilers.

Also in case I confused anyone the reference to "Act 1" behind the spoilers was supposed to be "Act 3 Part 1" oops.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Skyward Sword definitely my favorite 3D Zelda. (worth saying I haven't played BotW) Probably best story and dungeons of the Zelda games I've played, though Twilight Princess might have it beat in the story category. The field exploration aspect was a bit linear but honestly I found a lot of that really cool also.

Not sure what I'd pick for this FF song? Probably Yuna's Theme but I think I already picked that one earlier so I guess I'll go with Song of Memories from FF9?

Cold Steel 4: Haven't been commenting a lot on CS4 because tbh this is where a lot of my interest in the game itself started to nosedive, though it did recover for the finale. Some of the Crossbell stuff was pretty good though, particularly the Renne stuff you mentioned even if it was a bit short. I also liked the showdown with Rutger in in Act 1, though it was a bit overshadowed by the rest of Act 1 being some of my least favorite content of the entire game.

Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth: Don't have much specific to comment on but I did really like the part you just past xp. Probably what cemented the games as some of my favorites. Part of me still with they went the Tuskur=enemies route but the way they did it was good to
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Also while I never played Modern, Simian Spirit Guide definitely felt like a card that was unhealthy from an outsider's perspective. I guess that attitude is why I pretty much only play Standard and Limited, but yeah.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Part of me wants to get back into Pauper. Really fun format. Lot's of decks I don't like admittedly, but I had a lot of fun playing various red/blue builds there.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

The Boss but Liquid Ocelot is up there.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Bottom 5 avoided.

Tag
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I don't know enough of the non-Uematsu OST's (FF14 in particular) to say with any degree of confidence, but I quite like Sunleth Waterscape and Price of Freedom. Also I think there's a song performed by Bump of Chicken in Type-0 that I like?
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Thousand Year Door > Super Paper Mario > Paper Mario > Superstar Saga > Dream Team > Partners in Time >>>>>>>>>>>> Bowser's Inside Story

All good except for Bowser's Inside Story which for the life of me I will never understand why it is so well beloved. Though it's also worth pointing out all of the later Paper Mario games are missing because I haven't played them.

As far as FF orchestral arrangements go, I think I'll always have a soft spot for this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAiFyvro5-4
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I'm not super familiar with the format as a whole but the Modern version seems a bit better. You have Eldrazi for the targets and the inclusion of Cascade means it's somewhat more consistent in terms of getting the combo. (You only need to have a cascade card in your hand since you build your deck so Tibalt's Trickery is the only possible spell to hit off cascade.)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Using his numbers (which I did verify) I get about a 60% chance of hitting the combo by turn 3/4* assuming no disruption and that your strategy is mulligan until you see Tibalt's Trickery. There were a few steps where I rounded so maybe slap like a +/- 2% on that. This is also neglecting the chances of you getting mana screwed and how the probabilities are lowered by having some of the bombs in your hand, but I don't think that should drop it too significantly--maybe by around 2-5%.

*Really the condition here is after seeing 5 additional cards off the top of your library.

Still higher than expected but this is within the realm that I'm not too worried about the deck at least. Obviously sideboarding destroys it, but even in bo1 you're basically losing 40-45% of your games by default, and then even when you hit the combo you're still going to lose a noticeable amount to things like Binding of the Old Gods hitting your Ugin, for example. Also there are decks that maindeck countermagic anyways and can just counter the Tibalt's Trickery. (Rogues, U/B Control, U/R Tempo)

I'm totally okay with banning it on account of the fact the card isn't fun, and would be fine with that even if it's win rate was 30%, but I don't think the numbers or the results suggest it needs to be banned on power level alone.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Peace___Frog posted...

Something like a 70% chance of having an absolute bomb on board by turn 4?

Can you provide the source for this? I haven't done the math myself but this seems very very wrong and worth double checking.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Final Boss themes in FF are pretty good a lot of the time, but Dancing Mad pretty easily wins here. One of my all-time favorite VGM pieces without a doubt.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

If businesses can't afford to pay their workers a living wage than they shouldn't be in business. Driving them out is a good thing.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Cold Steel IV: I definitely got worn out by the amount of side content around this point of the game. There's just so much stuff you have access to at any given point. I think I still did all the sidequests, but I know around this time is when I started slacking hard on the NPC dialogue though. I did find Beryl in Eryn to be quite amusing though lmao.

Utawarerumono: I've heard the postgame for the 2 Mask games is pretty good though I never actually did anything with it myself. Postgame or similar content is just often not my thing. Glad you liked this one especially considering there are some stretches in the beginning and middle that drag on a lot, especially if you aren't really into the game's style of comedy. It does do a good job with characterization though and at least I think it really pays dividends towards the end of Mask of Deception and throughout Mask of Truth. Really love the end of this game and then Mask of Truth is pretty great for nearly the entirety imo.

Kuon the best.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I didn't play limited for a few days since I ran out of gems, but I just played another today and also got my first 7-win. It was a red/black berserker deck, and honestly I'm not even sure I got that many pieces of the red/black deck*. I always thought red/black was one of the better archetypes but I still wonder if I've been underestimating it. I drafted it once before and that was 4-3 which was also one of my better finishes.

*However I did draft Starnheim Unleashed, which was ironically the MVP in my red/black deck. Won each of the 3 games I cast it in, and there was only 1 match where it was awkwardly sitting in my hand without the ability to cast it. (Interestingly I still would have won that game with my other cards despite this if I didn't misplay...) Not sure how far one should bend over backwards to play the card without any other white cards and effectively no fixing, but I figured the card was powerful enough in limited to be worth it. Only ways to cast it were my 2 Plains or off treasure tokens from my Goldvein Pick or the 3 mana discard 1+draw2+make a treasure spell.

Goldvein Pick is not a card I would usually play I don't think but I specifically wanted to make it easier to cast Starnheim Unleashed here, which did come up.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

My favorite is probably Clash on the Big Bridge if push comes to shove but this one is right up there with it at least:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqe0NjB1Xig

Honorable mention to J-E-N-O-V-A
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Frustrating ways to lose a game: opponent slaps down a Crystalline Giant turn 3 that immediately gets hexproof and swings 7 times laughing at your hand full of targeting removal spells.

At least I won the match I guess.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

My top 2 are pretty easily Blinded by Light and this one in some order, so I guess I'll default to posting the other one so that I get something different

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jho-peCAKs
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I do like Winry but "not anything special" would still be putting you way ahead of Barry the Chopper for me.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I'm in the same boat. Don't think I really understand how the format works.

If I had any faith in the aggro in this set I might agree but shitty snow pile seems better to me than basically any aggro deck you can reasonably expect to get, and I've easily had more success with the former so far.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

LeonhartFour posted...

Barry the Chopper > Winry

Mostly good ranking but this I will not stand for.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Favorite FF overworld theme almost definitely is Crossing Those Hills. There's definitely other strong overworld themes, but I just love this one so much. FFIX so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1v02ubK7Wc
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

(Utawarerumono, responding to xp)

Yeah ok all I really wanted to say as far as the Mikado goes is that he basically has personal access to enough effectively god-like tech that he (as an individual) stands very little to fear from Tuskur's military forces. Which doesn't necessarily directly equate to it being a good or bad decision but yeah.

I don't think he necessarily knows that they might have access to things like the satellite strikes.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

xp1337 posted...

Utawarerumono Mask of Deception: Yeah, I've still been playing this. And boy did the Mikado and Yamato dun fuck up just now. Invading Tuskur? lmfao they're about to get a grim reminder. Hell, Karalau and Touka are still chilling in the capital and I'd literally take them over whatever defense Yamato could muster if it really came down to it. Could have been worse though, I guess. If they launched this invasion like a week earlier then no less than 7 of the first game's combat party would have been in the Imperial Capital at the time. And really I think Camyu is still hooked up to a Kill Sat network so her not being physically there anymore isn't too big a deal lol.

Yamato is also pretty overpowered! I forget what the term was but all the mask wearers are pretty busted.

Also how much of a role has the Mikado played so far? Can't remember the order in which things happen but depending on what you know about him/his motives there's other things to be said there.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Welp. Just went into a draft with Jund berserker elves that I started out trying to play as Sultai snow. It went about as badly as it sounds. Easily one of the worst drafts I've ever done.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Not 100% sure if it's my favorite but I've always been a fan of Bran Bal from FFIX. Particularly this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOP8AtJXQfA
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

There's a lot of good choices for character theme, but I feel like I've got to go with Yuna's Theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNLcIYq_kQ4

Such a nostalgic song. Long list of honorable mentions is something Rydia, Terra, Celes, Aerith, Freya, Steiner (ok this one's a guilty pleasure), and Vivi. Also Beatrix if you count Rose of May as her theme song, even if it isn't actually named that. I remember liking some of the FFXIII ones also but I can't actually recall what they sound like right now.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Lots of people playing Tibalt's Trickery nonsense in the Play queue and I have to say beating that feels quite satisfying. (at least when they don't just mull to 2 and then scoop)
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Trails of Cold Steel was still pretty good but when comparing the two the answer is Sky and it isn't even close.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Oh if books, etc count I think Harry Potter is a good choice?
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Persona very very much not an answer.

Trails is close, and probably does apply going by fanbase reception.

Tales of Symphonia is the 5th Tales game. Not really sure that one quite makes it either though.

If the only question we're asking is "what game did the most people play?" then probably Persona and Tales both work but that feels like the wrong criteria to me.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

Question for people who are more experienced in limited that I am:

How do you play/think about hands that have say 3 lands but all in 1 color? Assume you have a typical 2-color deck. Also let's say that you can cast 2-3 of your spells on a decent curve even if you don't draw the other color of land since probably I'm going to mulligan a hand with like 3 Swamps and then 4 red cards. But in the case I described it seems very borderline and I just don't know what the play is. I hate keeping hands that only have 1 color of land but also mulligan-ing at all just feels really really bad to me in limited even if you mulligan into a good 6 card hand. (At least this type of limited. I suppose if I'm playing like MTGO vintage cube it's probably a different story)

Yes I am asking because I kept a hand like I just described above (ie. 3 Swamps, 3 black cards with cost 2-4, and a red card) and then drew red cards on each of the first 3 turns and was very sad, but I'm not especially convinced I made the wrong decision.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I will say my post was only covering the last 5 or so years. There's tons of great stuff I didn't mention from 2010-2015 also though.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

eh I've had a lot of drafts not go so well either for similar reasons. Plum is overstating compared to my experience but I definitely found it's harder to get a good deck together than say Zendikar Rising or Ikoria which are the 2 formats I have the most experience in. (Ikoria I mainly hate because I don't like the mechanics)

Aggressively taking snow lands with the idea of making some kind of 3 color deck work seems better than conventional wisdom might suggest so far though.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I liked Steins;Gate Zero a lot.

I think most VN fans said that it was clearly worse than the VN but still pretty good. I never read the VN so idk.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.

I haven't been playing for long but I already like it at least much more than drafting Ikoria which was probably the least fun experience I've had in any TCG.

I definitely don't like it as much as Zendikar Rising draft, but that also felt like an exceptionally good limited format to me.
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I didn't do guru this year but azuarc can be in my sig anyways.