I’m happy to see some reconsideration of old bans, but it really felt like they’re sweeping LTR’s issues under the rug while the set remains in print.

I guess it’s possible that the metagame will shift to deal with these new powerhouses, but the Ring could still remain overly ubiquitous, being colorless and generically useful. It’s hard to read WotC’s wait-and-see approach as anything other than handwaving, given their track record this decade.

Oblivion is cool, but I’m with everyone else that want to see Morrowind remade first. I’ve been personally holding out for the Skywind mod for several years now. I just checked up on it and, yeah, they’re still workin’ on it.

It’s a good op ed and one with which any supporter of enlightened democracy should agree. The Supreme Court are playing fast and loose with public trust at a time when partisanship has crippled the other branches of government and polarization is dividing the country.

How can anyone respect a court that explicitly has no ethical standard?

Some of the spoilers to come in yesterday were pretty great, not gonna lie. It’s still going to be miserable to open Zetalpa in your $20 pack, but I think now there’s a critical mass of desirable cards to make it worth the gamble.

And while I’ve been mixed on the full-arts, the new Smothering Tithe is delightful and reminds me of the border-breaking layouts from Unglued.

I think this is most evident in the choice of legendary creatures, many of which hit the top of EDHrec years ago. Krenko, Omnath, Sidisi, Nekuzar, Mizzix, etc. Along with Land Tax, Commandeer, and Chromatic Lantern, the set seems to reflect the era when Commander was no more than an annual product.

There are so many new legendary creatures and EDH-playable cards released nowadays that, at least in my area, nobody is playing those old decks anymore.

Jumpstart is the product for you! It’s designed to help beginners get right into the game and try out a variety of play styles. Each Jumpstart pack contains half of a deck, lands and all. So you each open two packs, shuffle your cards together, and start playing.

There’s even a LotR Jumpstart edition, though the packs are a little more expensive than generic Jumpstart.

Mother 3 did it before it was cool. In the beginning of the game, money doesn’t exist and you can get whatever you need for free from the general store. Aways into the game, the pig army takes over, introducing money and ‘happy boxes,’ and everyone in town starts working industrial jobs to keep the pork machine running.

America was founded on the freedom to believe in crazy things, so to a great extent I agree with you. But all rights—including speech, privacy, and religion—have limits, and these limits need to delineate the space between the competing rights of others.

If gay people have the right to marry, then a county clerk cannot have the right to deny marriage certificates to gay couples.

If people of legally protected classes have a right to conduct business without fear of discrimination, then businesses cannot have the right to refuse service to those people, for religion or any other reason.

The Strixhaven archives knocked it out of the park, and I also thought the DMU stained glass showcase cards were comparable.

As for individual arts, I think my favorites are probably the Bruce Brenneise shock lands from UNF, namely Godless Shrine, Stomping Ground, and Breeding Pool.

I like seeing Spike and Vorthos hanging out.

I love token decks of all types. Squirrel tokens, copy tokens, whatever. My favorite is a mono-white deck that does nothing but create tokens and accrue value from them. I don’t usually like to attack with my tokens, so I generally wait until I can end the game with something like [[Starlight Spectacular]] or just dig for [[Halo Fountain]].

I hate that I agree with this. On the one hand, “lying about a pandemic during a pandemic” sure sounds a lot like “shouting fire in a crowded theater,” but things like the lab leak theory aren’t really a matter of public health. While there are times when the government can and should fight dangerous misinformation, this is the kind of executive power that needs to be kept in check by the courts for the executive’s own good.

This whole article is propaganda. If you want to see concern trolling, Millben is doing a ton of it by calling Obama’s remarks “arrogant” and “virtue-signaling.”

The fact is, religious nationalism is bad for any country that calls itself a democracy. Modi and his party should be taken to task both by Indians at home and by India’s fellow democracies.

The handheld/console hybrid has been Nintendo’s dream for a long time. They even merged their handheld and console development teams a few years back, so I can’t see them abandoning the formula.

The only way I can see iterating on the Switch design is by dropping the dock in favor of a tv dongle to connect and stream wirelessly. This could allow for asymmetrical gameplay much like the WiiU (and would open the door to WiiU ports).

Just buy it. Corporate malfeasance aside, the game is worth paying full price.

Sounds like backwards compatibility is a lock—not that it’s a huge hurdle for today’s machines—since most of the account features involve software and save data. The retro game archives will probably make the jump too, since keeping them locked behind a paid membership is probably more lucrative than the Virtual Console ever was.

Anyone who has ever transferred their account to a new Switch knows how easy it is, for the most part. The biggest chore is redownloading software data, so maybe Nintendo will allow full game data to transfer over via SD card this time.

I’m conflicted. I have no sympathy for Meta, but I think it would be a mistake to defed from all corporate-run servers axiomatically. Involvement from deep-pocket industries has its issues, but it also builds legitimacy and awareness.

You wouldn’t want your email provider to block all communication with Gmail, just because it’s Google-hosted, would you?

Ultimately, the strength of the decentralized model is to allow those who don’t want to see normie Meta content to move to a platform like Scicomm. But I worry for the drama and fallout when large instances make decisions that affect a huge number of users.

I’m a huge proponent of physical media, but this is entirely unsurprising given Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. Compared to Switch and especially Playstation, the Xbox has a much higher rate of digital game sales.

If Starfield were on PS5, it would get a disc release for sure, and Xbox would probably get one too for the sake of parity. But discs aren’t terribly important to the Xbox crowd, and that goes double for PC gamers.

Moreover, digital games are good for the publisher’s bottom line, so physical media is only going to exist as long as customers demand it. And PC and Xbox gamers simply don’t.

“Quadrant theory,” as I believe it is called, has been a useful tool for assessing which cards stay and which cards can go.

Basically, you break down the game into quadrants (e.g., early game, late game, post-boardwipe, waiting-for-wincon, stalemate, etc.) and consider how a given card will perform in various stages of the game.

A card that can be useful in more game quadrants is obviously preferable to a card that will sit in your hand if you draw it at the wrong time. For example, a counterspell can serve as removal when an opponent drops a threat, or it can protect your board while you go for the win.

This approach favors modal spells at the expense of powerful niche spells, so it should be employed judiciously. But it’s a good way of considering to what extent a card can carry its weight.