rezaaba

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Mastodon

Relinking myself back to Mastodon... to see if I can revalidate my own links.

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The Modern meta may be all over the place right now, but Bob and Tiago are still worth foiling. #mtgpimp #mtg

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Courts in Germany

TIL that according to /u/Klaus_Goldfish, there are 4 outcomes to court proceedings in Germany:

You win: The loser pays your court costs.

You lose: You pay the winner's court costs.

The plaintiff withdraws the lawsuit (usually because of a negotiated settlement): Both sides pay their own costs, court costs are shared. May differ, depending on the negotiated settlement.

The judge says "What is this I can't even", and returns the case with no judgement: Everyone pays their own costs, the court is free.

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One of the things I've had to do recently is to compress a PDF scan of some documents to an acceptable size. If you didn't know already, this feature is already baked into Yosemite's Preview as Quartz filter (File > Duplicate > Save > Quartz Filter > Reduce File Size). The problem is that in some instances, the filter is a bit too efficient, making some text unreadable. This brought me to Jerome Colas' excellent quartz filters which you can find in the link. If you run OSX Yosemite, you need to place the filters in your global Library whose folder you can find in your Mac's HDD (Macintosh HD/Library/Filters). Once you restart Preview, the new filters should be there under the Quartz Filter option.

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2015 MTG Pro Tour Schedule... all standard!

The armchair pundit in me thinks the following:

Standard interest fuels card buying. Recent Hasbro year-on-year earnings show a slight deceleration in growth... but execs in suits said this is probably due to Theros being a Large-Small-Small block vs. RTR block being Large-Large-Small. Khans block should 'fix' this.

People have been bitching about Modern card staples skyrocketing out of control. A one year self-imposed lull in interest will allow Wizards more time to seed more modern staples. Look at the price of Thoughtseize and shocklands. I want this to happen to fetches so that more people can play the bloody game, not make me a cardboard rich man.

There are no more constructed format 'seasons', so there are no peaks and troughs of interest in the format. If your store has lots of Modern players, you can even play it as a PTQQ format or a GPT format when it is 'off-season' which wasn't possible before (if it wasn't in-season, the format wasn't in-vogue).

Wizards cares about eternal formats, yes, even Legacy. An Asian Legacy GP hasn't happened before, but will happen in 2015. But simultaneously, they realise that 3rd-party TOs have been able to pick up the slack in maintaining and continuing the interest in eternal formats. This frees up Wizards' resources into pooling it into more GPs to ensure interest in the GAME is kept high.

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Is this a wonderflonium alter?

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A very interesting read indeed on the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook from the private equity investors in the company.

WhatsApp Co-Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton

Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team.

From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp,...

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No UWR for me in Legacy

For the first time in a very long time (probably since BOM Paris last November!), I played Legacy. I took UWR (Owen's build) to an 8-man at Dark Sphere and went 1-2, winning against Doomsday, and losing against Miracles and BUG Delver. Some quick thoughts from yesterday:

I think UWR is poorly positioned against UWR and BUG Delver. Miracles can take its time to setup a big turn and UWR doesn't have a good enough clock with enough threats to close out the game. I found Dazes, Spell Pierce and Wastelands incredibly poor in that matchup. I would hate to have to play this matchup multiple times over a course of a big tournament and for that reason alone I think I'm dismantling UWR.

I had a slightly easier matchup against BUG, but this was mostly due to its vulnerability to Wastelands. I also found that BUG Delver isn't as kold to RIP as I thought it would be. I was better off holding back mana on turn 2 to counterspell a Liliana as there was no way I could get a threat to stick once Lili hit the board. Oh, and there's also Tombstalker out of BUG which only StPs can handle.

GBP8.50 for Nightveil Specter is really expensive. I was thinking of buying a playset for funsies for Vintage, but at that price, I would rather pass. It's great not having the time for Standard... I don't have to be sucked into buying cards which are rather expensive for the amount of use I would have gotten out of them.

BUG in Vintage is only good if you can land a Null Rod. Even if you do land up protecting it, I'm still kold to Hurkyl's Recall or Tinker. This card should be either a 4-of, or a none of. I wonder if RUG Delver in Vintage is any better, but I'd lose the security of being able to fire off uncounterable Abrupt Decays.

Mana denial is probably the best strategy to go for against Doomsday. Not only do they need BBB to resolve the namesake spell, but they also need cards in hand to build storm for the Tendrils finish. They could of course, go for the Lab Maniac/Emrakul win, but that takes time. Keeping them off black mana seems to be the working strategy. Also, Meddling Mage on Burning Wish is sweet. Another cool play from yesterday: Dazing a random spell to tax them, returning a Tundra to ensure that my opponent couldn't Massacre for free. Geist of St. Traft out of the board was better than TNN as it clocks for 6 (instead of 3) although its a lot more vulnerable to Pyroclasm.

Next up: build Vintage Humans and Jund.

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You may have just been banned in Modern DRS, but you will continue to shine in Legacy and Vintage!

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On the subject of Spirit of the Labyrinth, I think Wizards wants to see how the card shakes up Legacy (and therein: JTMS) before deciding to unban JTMS in Modern. My timeline says Journey's (or M15) is when he'll be unbanned. You have a Legacy GP (Paris) in Feb, and 2 Modern GPs going into the summer season. Plenty of time for observation.

It’s a mere 12 hours to the ban list update for 3rd February 2014. Modern is a format I am deeply in love with, and as a player who’s been playing Modern since its inception in 2011, I couldn’t be more happy to see the format growing, and evolving into the state it is currently is: deep, fun and...

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Look what just came in the mail! Sweet mythic foily goodness.

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In the era of the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter, we want frictionless, “turnkey” solutions to the major difficulties of the world. We prefer instructional videos to teachers, drones to troops, incentives to institutions. But technology and incentive programs are not enough. Every change requires effort, and the decision to make that effort is a social process. Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.

An interesting article about why some ideas take so long to propagate, even in this era of modern communication.

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Now this is what an elemental token should look like!

Elemental token #gpcalgary

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Deep.

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Ah, could not be more true. I still have Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to get through. And my ACIII and Fifa 13 are still in shrink wrap!

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This is an insta-bookmark! Sporting the J. Crew rolled-up sleeve look now...

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Whatever we accumulate, we will leave behind, whatever we give stay with us.