The Train Station

[TrainmasterGT]

these are some good-ass posts my dude

Thanks Safra! That means a lot coming from you!!

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Posting my 1000th message here because I felt like it and didn't want it to be in some random thread to be lost to time.

I'm sentimental like that

 

[LadyMapi]

I recently read your Green Artifacts article, and I was pretty surprised by what I didn't see there.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I recently read your Green Artifacts article, and I was pretty surprised by what I didn't see there.

The green artifacts deck is more of a green-based +1/+1 counters strategy making use of Modular cards and other good artifact counters payoffs, so I wasn't really thinking about this as an enabler when I was writing the article. Stirrings is probably a good option if you decide to implement this archetype in your cube, but keep in mind that it will often be cantripping for a land as opposed to an artifact.

 

[landofMordor]

Have you listened to the most recent Lords of Limited podcast ep, "Synergy Theory"? It is perhaps a different way of articulating your Thanos design heuristic. You contrast Unsupported vs Supported playability, while Synergy Theory correlates to Supported Playability and pairs with Quadrant Theory (which is akin to Unsupported).

Part of the appeal of ST/QT to me is that QT is accepted jargon already. But it also does a pretty good job of articulating some approachable questions when evaluating a card contextually.

So, for example, a card like Young Pyromancer is mediocre by QT -- it's good at parity and when ahead, but it's less good when behind or in developing stages of the game. Its failstate is a Goblin Piker, which does it no favors. By Synergy Theory, though, we can add in those dimensions to the card's power that are contextual: Young PZ aligns well with Red's typical gameplan, it powers up all the burn spells in Red and all the removal/cantrips/utility in other colors (so it's very flexible), and its printed text "instants and sorceries" interacts favorably with a large subset of most cubes. So it's a great card to include on strength of its synergies rather than raw stats. These are easier answers for me to obtain a priori, e.g. during spoiler season or when I'm contemplating buying a new card.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Have you listened to the most recent Lords of Limited podcast ep, "Synergy Theory"? It is perhaps a different way of articulating your Thanos design heuristic. You contrast Unsupported vs Supported playability, while Synergy Theory correlates to Supported Playability and pairs with Quadrant Theory (which is akin to Unsupported).

Part of the appeal of ST/QT to me is that QT is accepted jargon already. But it also does a pretty good job of articulating some approachable questions when evaluating a card contextually.

So, for example, a card like Young Pyromancer is mediocre by QT -- it's good at parity and when ahead, but it's less good when behind or in developing stages of the game. Its failstate is a Goblin Piker, which does it no favors. By Synergy Theory, though, we can add in those dimensions to the card's power that are contextual: Young PZ aligns well with Red's typical gameplan, it powers up all the burn spells in Red and all the removal/cantrips/utility in other colors (so it's very flexible), and its printed text "instants and sorceries" interacts favorably with a large subset of most cubes. So it's a great card to include on strength of its synergies rather than raw stats. These are easier answers for me to obtain a priori, e.g. during spoiler season or when I'm contemplating buying a new card.

I have not listened to this podcast episode, although I will definitely check it out. Thank you for the suggestion!