General Other News

[ravnic]

That is one step in the right direktion! And I applaud you!

If you really wanna go all in, then you can easily take three steps in the right direction if you instead start eating meat again and then in return stop wasting food and completely stop eating candy, sodas etc. which are the real sinners in comparison to meat consumption.

Even if Candy and Soda would be worse in the ecological rate than meat, how would eating meat again make anything better? Also, it is not an opinion but a scientific fact, that factory farming is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases, one of the biggest reasons for rain forest destruction and extinction. The calories and nutrition we get from meat stands in no relation to the ressources that you need for production.

1 kilogram beef requires over 15.000 liters of water and 16 kilograms of corn/soy.
That's the rate you have with a hardcast Scornful Egotist.
Scornful. Egotist. Hardcast.

"Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife. [...] The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions."

https://amp.theguardian.com/environ...le-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

And that is all ignoting what I said before: We are killig billions of individuals that feel the same happiness, fear and pain as our cats, dogs and ourselves.

Excuse the offtopic, I don't want to offend or force anyone, but I won't apologize for raising my voice for the voiceless and my home planet from time to time.

 

[GalacticTraveler12]

I don't have an issue with Arcane Signet. The creativity in deckbuilding doesn't have to come from every slot or every type of card; if I know I can cast my spells reliably (without dropping $$$ on the perfect manabase), I have a lot more room to make tough/interesting choices elsewhere. How are you expressing creativity with whatever inferior mana rock would replace this instead?

I like to customize every card and component of commander decks, just as you described, though I certainly see why others would not want to. When all your cards have character, even in the form of minor downsides, so many more routes are opened, including subthemes or flavor maximising. But with cards like Command Tower, there exists a card that is literally just perfect fixing, and you'd be mad not to play in a multicolored deck. I see this as creativity being pushed out.

 

[Velrun]

Even if Candy and Soda would be worse in the ecological rate than meat, how would eating meat again make anything better? Also, it is not an opinion but a scientific fact, that factory farming is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases, one of the biggest reasons for rain forest destruction and extinction. The calories and nutrition we get from meat stands in no relation to the ressources that you need for production.

Start eating meat will not help. But if you have a choice of either stop eating meat or stop eating candy, you should always choose to eat meat and to stop eating candy. If you are thinking about the environment and the greenhouse effect. This has nothing to do with health and nothing to do with economy. It is simply what is best for mother nature. Candy production is by far the biggest sinner among all the things we humans decide to eat. Scientificly speaking and statistically speaking.

Also there is pig in most candy globally speaking so maybe that is one of the reasons why candy is the biggest environmental sinner.

Second comes meat consumption and food waste.

This is from a report I read 12 months ago. Please don’t make me go find it online.
——

I saw no one else making a topic about Brawl 2019. I thought this was a good place to put a supplement product with many exclusively Commander cards + a few cube-potential cards.

 

[ravnic]

Okay that sounds like it makes sense. I mean most candy is very proceeded and mostly with animal products inside. Also, chocolate has a really bad co2 rate as well. I'm just not convinced that this is really a bigger step than a vegan or even vegetarian diet in general, primarily since "candy" is such a huge variety of things, of which some are probably not that bad, and most people tend to eat more meat than candy I'd say.

BUT:

In the end, very importantly: Every rain starts with a drop. Means, every little step someone is ready to do in the right direction is a great one and should be appreciated. We as a society won't achieve anything if we just criticize each other for the things we don't do perfectly. Judging won't let us reach many goals, informing and working together will!

We're like many Saprolings convoking an Autochton Wurm. (I m really desperately trying to stay on topic here!)

 

[Velrun]

Dude I know that i why I initiated the original comment with:

That is one step in the right direction! And I applaud you!

Cheers

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Going full vegetarian or vegan is asking a lot of people (in the sense that it's a gigantic dietary shift). The world could be helped a lot already by getting people to shift to a diet where meat isn't a 7 days a week requirement anymore.

 

[ravnic]

Absolutely. The most important step I think is the awareness. Then, every small step is not lnly easier but also one in the right direction. Having one vegan meal, taking the bike instead of the car, adopting a shelter dog, etc.

But believe me, there is not a single vegan in this world who said at one point in his life "I could never do this" ... it is much much easier than you think before, because you'll automatically discover new meals, places, recipies and possibilities.

 

[vennythekid]

Going full vegetarian or vegan is asking a lot of people (in the sense that it's a gigantic dietary shift). The world could be helped a lot already by getting people to shift to a diet where meat isn't a 7 days a week requirement anymore.

That's where I'm at right now. I've found it very difficult to give up meat entirely, especially since growing up meat was the centerpiece of so many of our family's dinner meals. But earlier this year I stopped buying beef (which is the worst of the group environmentally) at the grocery and have several dinners a week that don't have meat. And that's been very doable, surprisingly.

I think you're absolutely right in that people turn away by being asked to do something difficult and drastic right away.

 

[sigh]

That's where I'm at right now. I've found it very difficult to give up meat entirely, especially since growing up meat was the centerpiece of so many of our family's dinner meals. But earlier this year I stopped buying beef (which is the worst of the group environmentally) at the grocery and have several dinners a week that don't have meat. And that's been very doable, surprisingly.

I think you're absolutely right in that people turn away by being asked to do something difficult and drastic right away.

This is basically my diet also. Sometimes there's a beef meal still, but mostly chicken and vegetarian meals.

I'm not an advocate of veganism because so many local farmers, individual growers, and indigenous peoples rely on animals of some sort. Industrialized animal husbandry is the real problem here, not Billy and his three chickens that he gets eggs and manure from, or the Peruvian village raising Llamas and Guinea pigs, or the small vegetable farm that has a couple beehives. National Beef is the problem.

 

[ravnic]

Yeah but Billy and his 3 chickens are not even 1% of the meat production. Same goes for eggs/milk. It's just not doable to provide all we consume in this romantic way. It also has just the same horrivle efficiency rate for our environment.
And even if this wouldn't be the case, there is still the moral question. It's sadly an illusion that we all can just pay a few bucks more and all the animals are happy.

Also, you can't justify something simply with the srgument that it provides jobs currently.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

It's sadly an illusion that we all can just pay a few bucks more and all the animals are happy.

The problem is that meat has become an industry. For the large scale farmers (and everyone up the chain), it's a question of efficiency, so that they can provide meat at the price point the customer expects it to be available. The real change in awareness we need is for people to understand that meat should cost a good bit more. Double the price, and people will have to cut on meat expenses, eat meat maybe 3 or 4 days a week, and in smaller portions. From there, farmers can keep a smaller, less polluting, stock of animals, factories can operate at a much smaller scale, and butchers can keep a lower stock while still earning enough to make ends meet. The real problem, of course, is that this is unlikely to happen in the current capitalist (western) world economy, unless a nations-transcending, either politically or culturally inspired (or both, ideally), green initiative gets the gears of change turning.

 

[sigh]

And its absolutely not true that localized agriculture is just as polluting. You are cutting out a ton of transportation and potentially plastic packaging, you are more effectively using secondary products (manure, etc), and it's much easier for small scale farmers to benefit from other green practices. Agriculture itself isn't the most polluting thing humanity is doing: industrialization + the related extreme amounts of transportation is. This is true for veggies or meat.

This is from the State of Vermont, my home state. There's a very big dairy industry there, but even so transportation is much, much more impactful. Where I am now, I have to drive to the grocery store, but I can take a quick bus or even bike to the farmers market. Which doesnt get its deliveries in a constant stream of semi trucks, or have a bank of air conditioners and refrigerators running 24/7.

This is why I dont endorse absolute veganism. Supporting a localized economy, including all of the useful animal products those economies generate is a much more effective solution than simply switching to the vegetable and nut ag industries.

This is also, I guess, moral questions aside. I dont really think much into that since I raised animals my whole life.

 

[shamizy]

More people should run Retrofitter Foundry. Just saying.

I'm a week late, just got back from a camping trip, but I will vouch for this after running two cube drafts at a cabin with some friends over this week. That card is amazing. I will be doing an in-depth cube report sometime this week and I'm definitely going in on this because the card is incredible. I can't believe I wasn't running it for so long. I'm a complete believer.

 

[Velrun]

Looking forward to that!

 

[ravnic]

So we have:

"Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet."

VS. someoke who raises animals for profit and gave us a statistic from his homestate Vermont without a credible source. I am not convinced, but it is normal that people who still eat meat love to hear it is not all that bad. That's the way we humans function.


I also think it is really critical to not exclude the moral question. Slavery was also a super useful thing until someone asked the moral question.

 

[Velrun]

Enough with the off topic!

Back to Magic and cube-related Magic.

 

[Velrun]

Hearthstone has launched a new game mode called Duels which is basically a Hearthstone version of my cube: The Coliseum

Link to Hearthstone announcement:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/7687-fall-reveal-stream-today-stream-is-live-twitch

Link to the Coliseum here on Riptidelab:
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/the-coliseum.2715/

Hurraa for self promotion

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Duels looks really awesome, but it's in early access mode, which you only gain access to if you buy either the €45 or the €85 preorder for the new set that comes out next month. I'm still tempted, even though Hearthstone charges entirely too much money for their boosters (my opinion, not a fact).

 

[Velrun]

There's an update to most non-cube formats:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...15-2021-banned-and-restricted-announcement?56

15 cards have been banned. Two of them you have probably never heard of

Also they're changing the keyword Cascade a little bit. Now you can't cheat more expensive spells onto the stack by cascading into a split card or dual faced card where one half of the card is a legal 'target' and the other is more expensive. From now on you have to cast the less expensive one.

 

[shamizy]

I don't know why you'd even want to play competitive Magic at this point anymore.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I don't know why you'd even want to play competitive Magic at this point anymore.

From what I've seen on twitter and reddit, this B&R is encouraging news for people who want to play competitive mtg.

 

[Velrun]

I don't know why you'd even want to play competitive Magic at this point anymore.

I beg to differ. The cube games we run in my playgroup get brutally competitive sometimes..

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I don't know why you'd even want to play competitive Magic at this point anymore.

From what I've seen on twitter and reddit, this B&R is encouraging news for people who want to play competitive mtg.

Yeah, they removed a bunch of degenerate stuff from the eternal formats.

In modern, they got rid of the Uro/Field/Sanctuary lock decks, removed the Tibalt's Trickery combo decks, and slowed down degenerate combo decks using Simian Spirit Guide. They might have weakened Neoform and Ad Nauseam to the point where they're not so unfair anymore.

The pioneer bans are great. They removed the most frustrating top-end card from sultai midrange decks, severely weakened Oops all Spells, and got rid of T3feri and Wilderness Reclamation. These bans might make some of the old Theros-Khans style decks we used to see earlier in the format's lifespan playable again, fingers crossed.

I don't play legacy, but I know a lot of people didn't like Oko/Astrolabe/Arcanist's effect on the format.

Also, reversing the Lurrus ban in vintage is good, since he was neutered by the companion rules change.

These bans are going to make the eternal formats much better to play. I'm excited to play Pioneer again with these changes.

 

[shamizy]

No, I get that balance wise. I'm well aware of these self inflicted errors from Magic R&D. I just think it's dumb from a consumer standpoint to put any money down into competitive Magic as a hobby nowadays with the frequency of format warping cards being printed and then subsequently banned. Like what's even the point in putting in reps with a deck to get good at it if there's a nonzero chance of it being just banned out of existence within a year? That seems to be the norm now across multiple formats.

I just don't see why you'd want to put money into a deck and keep up with a meta if it can just be banned out of the format so easily. It was different years back when Eternal formats mostly lived up to the moniker with infrequent bans and format warpers, but that's just not true anymore. I've had Jund built in Modern for a few years and it's ready to go if I ever wanted to play, but if I were someone new getting into Modern I would not feel confident investing any money into a top tier deck. Not when it could just be banned out from underneath me a few months down the line due to shortsighted design decisions.

Doesn't affect me much since I have zero interest in Constructed Magic anymore, but it's not a good look for the game as a whole.

 

[sigh]

I would say that growing constructed format instability was one of the underlying factors behind my loss of interest in constructed, and paralleled my growth in interest in cube. Pretty much exactly as shamizy says, it's hard justifying buying into the "best" deck when there's a clear and present danger of it being nuked shortly thereafter. That leaves you either not playing, or playing another deck and being forced to play against that busted deck until maybe it's banned out. Not great. Unfortunately I feel it's a little inevitable, as I feel like WotC has started to hit a dangerous exponentiation in peak power levels, or maybe in power level ranges. A near-necessary evil of their own expansion system, pushing boundaries and searching for new territory in a kinda game of one-ups-manship designed to maintain sales interest, not necessarily play interest.

If I were to play constructed again at some point, it will either be with a deck of yesteryear that I still have the cards for, or a deck with the primary goal of spending as close to $0 as possible. Basically in either case just to play for the kicks of it.