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mngwa5 · 4 months

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Life is Strange EDH/Commander headcanons: True Colors Edition

AN: Not a lot of canon stretching for this one really. I can totally see Steph trying to organize a Haven commander pod and roping Alex and a reluctant Ryan into the fray.

Alex Chen:

Has an incredibly cheese filled Jodah, Archmage list. While she and Steph snicker about the the thematic relevance of Jodah's emphasis on colors, what really attracts Alex is the fact that she can throw around huge, game-swinging spells at a steep, steep discount.

Absolutely uses her powers to read the other players at the table. If you feel sad and internally lament being mana-screwed, get ready to be targeted. If you're excited and getting ready to swing out for lethal or are on the verge of assembling your combo, don't be surprised if Alex suddenly starts politicking with the table to put you down.

On the topic of her own emotions, she will either be the picture of stoicism or a salty little gremlin who lets grudges run deep throughout the night. It really depends on the group, but God forbid if Ryan even swing at her with something as innocuous as a 2/2 squirrel token, you're all in for it.

Doesn't really like creature centric decks and when she does, they're usually being played in service of some other goal. Instead she values high interaction but utterly bullshit lists like Yarok landfall and Prosper tax fraud treasure, much to Steph's chagrin.

Ryan Lucan:

Kinda like Nathan in the previous installment of this series, Ryan is another case of someone who would really let the in-universe color philosophy affect their out of game choice of commander.

He LOVES the entire concept behind mono-green and endures Steph clowning on him for it because he knows that Birthing Pod and Craterhoof Behemoth do not give a fuck what she has to say when it comes time to shuffle up.

Really enjoys playing ramp heavy stompy decks like Selvala. The more creatures he can shit out, the better.

You already know he has a bird tribal deck too. He started out with Derevi, but splurged immediately and wheeled it into a Falco Spara, Pactweaver list once New Capenna dropped because it combines his love of avian stuff and cheating creatures out.

Alex constantly harangues him about how he never optimizes, but to be honest, it's already pretty serviceable at the Haven Commander Night's power level. There's just something about removing a counter off Soulcatcher and in order to flash out Aven Mindcensor that soothes Ryan's soul.

Steph Gingrich:

Oh Steph, where do we begin? Nerd queen supreme over here definitely makes routine trips into Denver to LGSs to pick up singles or just oogle fetch lands and art prints.

Isn't actually all that into Magic because she prefers more narrative driven modes of play like TTRPGs and LARPing, but will def throw down especially if it means she could school Ryan and Alex.

Once the AFR set dropped, Steph was suddenly ALL over organizing commander nights.

Once she got everyone together, she proceeded to debut a hum-dinger of a Captain N'ghathrod list much to the chagrin of pretty much fucking everybody in attendance (especially Ryan. Poor guy probably had to watch HER play more of his deck than he did lol).

I am 100% convinced every move she makes in-game would just be a subtle way of trying to flirt with Alex, which is both a great boon to those who can figure that out and a curse when it comes to making deals.

#life is strange #life is strange true colors #steph gingrich #alex chen #ryan lucan #tl;dr they just use mtg as a medium of bullying Ryan lol

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elspeth-tirel · 1 year

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FMK?

Yomiji, Who Bars the Way

Yargle, Glutton of Urborg

Yarok, the Desecrated

Fuck Yargle, gotta respect the Yarg-heads out there even if I don't feel anything for him

Marry Yarok, it seems super nice and like a good nightmare

Kill Yomiji

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inventors-fair · 1 year

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Limited Experiences, Archetypes, and How a Little Madness will Get You Nowhere or Everywhere

Folks, I don't play Arena and I don't have a MODO account. I've drawn tokens and borrowed dice. My experiences in MTG have been weird to say the least and I've been playing since before I needed to shave regularly. Which I still don't.

But part of Magic's versatility is the ability to go hog wild with the card that you pick as long as you're doing something fun. I draft a lot with my students when we can, and I get to see the kinds of decks that they play as well. Back in Shadows over Innistrad, I was fascinated with a student's Jeskai Aggro build; he's still playing at the LGS whenever he can, with a real job and everything. When we drafted Streets of New Capenna, one student played BW Elspeth and another swung Temur, of all things. You don't have to be normal about anything.

I'm far from normal in my constructed designs, so I'll admit to being caught by the bug; my competitive Pioneer decks are a homebrew Mono-White Weenies deck that still runs Brimaz, and a Mono-Red Skredless Skred Karnfires pile of nonsense that baffles the Spikes right before they beat me (or get Glorybringer'd). And yet, when I draft, normalcy abounds. The big cards are big, and the other cards are... Well, sometimes control works. Sometimes.

I'm going to go through the four most recent standard sets and talk about their archetypes, my experiences, and whether or not weirdness is permitted. Hopefully this will encourage you to go back and find a bit of weirdness yourself. Or not. But whatever you make for this week, it has to capture something that'll make us feel again. Don't let me down—but how can you? You're an Inventor.

Let's start most recently...

MARCH OF THE MACHINE

As many folks have heard me crow about already, I won our LGS's March of the Machine store championship. The deck was greedy, swingy, and the legends really tore the deck apart with their power level. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite was and is a very powerful card. The limited archetypes were:

WU Knights

UB Instants/Sorceries/Recursion

BR Sacrifice

RG Battles

GW +1/+1 Counters

WB Incubate/Phyrexians

BG Incubate/Phyrexians

GU DFCs

UR Convoke

RW Backup

An abundance of mana-fixing ensured that the three/four/five-color decks could have fun on their own, and the wedge legends encouraged that as well if you could pick them up. The inclusion of Yarok and Atraxa were rare, but also pushed for a little bit of green-oriented power there.

As you can see, two archetypes (Battles & Backup) pushed for the newest set mechanics. Personally? I never tried them. Backup was best used wherever the aggro happened on its own, and Battles were better in the grindier colors and/or as bombs for other archetypes when necessary.

Grinding out fliers was usually the way to go. I don't have many fond memories of drafting this set, not in the same way I do with other sets. The mechanics were great, and Battles were surprisingly fun, but coming out on top felt less about who was the better player and more who could draw into the uninteractive over-the-top synergy first.

When things got good, things got GREAT. I stared down an amazing five-color Alara pile once that blew me out of the water, and knights had a heck of a time. But sealed... Sealed was amazing. Even the prerelease (which I missed winning by a hair) had amazing moments. The decks could pack all their iconic characteristics into one mashup and it felt like assembly of a monument, less haphazard and more genuinely epic. What does it say that a set feels more cohesive the less control you have over what you pick from it?

At least the Incubate mechanics were awesome all around. It synergized with Phyrexian typal, +1/+1 counters, and the transformation theme. I'd put Incubate as my favorite mechanic and archetype.

WEIRDNESS CONCLUSION: You had to get weird with this format, but even the weirdness didn't feel good because the biggest cards like Ghalta and Chandra performed regardless of their archetype. It was both cluttered and samey at the same time. Weirdness failed to find the good-feeling spot.

Best you could do was the five-color pile, and that relied on bomb support—not that you really had to ask for it.

PHYREXIA: ALL WILL BE ONE

This set was baller. It was fast. It was fun. It was interactive on the battlefield. Combat mattered immensely and topdecks felt radically tense. I had so much fun with this set. The archetypes were:

WU Artifacts Matter

UB Proliferate

BR Oil Sacrifice

RG Oil Aggro

GW Toxic Midrange

WB Mites/Tokens

BG Toxic Aggro

GU Proliferate

UR Noncreatures

RW Equipment

Out of all of these, the only archetype I saw eschewed was GW. My favorite deck I made was a four-color pile with Atraxa (hnnng, yet 2-1 overall) but I saw mono-red go undefeated one night as well. Two proliferate and two toxic archetypes meant there was a fair amount of love to be spread, yeah? But speed mattered a lot. Usually.

There was a night where I had the fastest BG deck possible, and only dropped a game where I missed four land drops in a row. But I won the match because the proliferation mattered when the toxic couldn't connect, and there was no way out. Battles were furious. People say that RB was the best archetype—or was it RG?—but just about everything could be done well. WU wasn't the most popular, and neither was UB, but both of them performed well.

Oil counters being the newest addition as do-nothing-but-synergize felt a little off at first, but when they worked, they worked immensely well, and they suited the environment in a way that I really didn't expect. You wanted to get them, use them, board them, and burn them. And don't get me started on the awesomeness of For Mirrodin! As a piece of noncreature-ish tech, the equipment archetype was more powerful than I had thought possible.

WEIRDNESS CONCLUSION: If you could do it right, you could do it well. 3-5 color decks had odd synergies but had stiff competition. This set didn't feel like it had quite the wiggle room for competitive oddities, but it felt good to perform with them all the same. Cunning mattered more.

Best you could do would probably be a control curve. A lack of sweepers meant true control was next to impossible, but you could eke it out.

THE BROTHER'S WAR

Out of all the disappointments, BRO was one of the most frustrating to contend with. Big stuff on top of big stuff only mattered when you could cheat it out or go fast enough that it hardly made a difference when you killed someone. Forgone conclusions were just that. The archetypes were:

WU Soldiers

UB "Draw Two"

BR Sacrifice

RG Powerstone Aggro

GW Artifact ETB

WB Small Soldiers

BG Self-Mill

GU Big Robots

UR Noncreatures

RW Aggro

Go fast or go home. When games got grindy, everyone went to time, and then everyone who drafted red got to sit around and watch them before winning the event. There were, on occasion, odd decks that managed to eke out victories, but the archetypes felt more or less directionless.

Soldiers had to be committed to so early that, if you didn't draw a bomb P1P1, you were done for. Powerstones felt good and versatile all around, but they were primarily sacrifice fodder and on occasion used in combat for tricks that would get lethal anyway. People would hate out the RB deck for that alone, and then whoever got the red bombs or the ramp would come out on top. Removal felt decent. Blue was a strange fiend where practically none of the archetypes felt supported, but WU worked if you just went for straight midrange. Urza's rare card in particular was stellar.

Drafting a curve was useless unless you built specifically to go against the decks that were going faster than you. The bonus sheet as well was...interesting. Quicksilver Amulet was particularly strong if you could find it. But even Wurmcoil Engine was slow. Sometimes you got to go nuts with Bone Saw. Most often, they slotted in, but didn't change much unless they hit the other singularly good card in your deck.

WEIRDNESS CONCLUSION: I watched my Students play with this one. One of them assembled the Workers in his deck and only lost one match. But RG aggro got there because the kids drafting RB weren't quite ready to go nuts. I was surprised at some of the expertise and not at all surprised at the others. With the LGS, nobody particularly liked the set because of the imbalance.

Best you could do probably WOULD be the Workers deck, unless you had some kind of combo. To get true jank, you'd have to board specifically against the best decks.

DOMINARIA UNITED

This is how you can make weirdness work. You know how in Khans of Tarkir, the lifegain lands made all the difference? But in March of the Machine, they muddled the waters? Well... Anyway, here are the archetypes:

WU Instants/Sorcery Midrange

UB Instant/Sorcery Control

BR Death/Sacrifice Aggro

RG Domain Beats

GW Tokens

WB Aristocrats

BG Graveyard Matters

GU Domain Ramp

UR Instant/Sorcery Aggro

RW Enlist Aggro

Fast and furious? It would seem so, but there was enough countermagic, removal, and interruption in this set to give it a strong back-and-forth. Even lifegain mattered immensely! My favorite deck I made was an incredible Sultai control build, but I got blown out on other nights with other fantastic decks, and in general? We had so much fun trying to be weird. That Sultai deck was splashing for the Domain lands, and that's where the fun happened.

The aggro was often offset by the other colors having big durdly butts and toughness that could match it, plus draw power on the side. Splashing was vital unless your game plan was tuned precisely. Equipment mattered, and every draw got you closer. Searching was fun and made for difficult choices. Domain was always relevant, always.

In every color combination, you could make something relevant, and if things went wrong, that was okay. Off-color kicker still felt great to build a powerful deck around. Removal felt like it had to be used at the right time, and it could turn the tide of battle with effort yet. Sometimes white felt a little weak, until it flew through the air and smacked the crap out of you. And if someone got a solid defenders deck, they were on cloud nine.

The format allowed for decks to slow down the field enough for interaction to happen, and the fast decks got their day in the sun all the time. Balance and options without too many cards and without a push towards bombastic setpieces meant that synergy could prosper. Yes, even with Sheoldred in the set.

WEIRDNESS FACTOR: If you could dream it, you could do it. The set punished spreading yourself too thin without support, but the support that it gave allowed for weird stuff to manifest quite well.

There's no limit to the best you could do: Abzan sacrifice, five-color goodstuff, Legendary typal, Jeskai spellslinging (that happened a fair amount actually), Bant control... It was awesome.

But these were just my experiences and my observations. On Arena, the same draft rules hardly apply. On MODO, the player base is much different. And of course, every LGS has its player base who plays differently.

What were your best limited experiences? What's the set where you felt the most powerful weirdness, and how do you want to bring that to your card this week?

With love, @abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #monday blog #limited

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niuttuc · 2 years

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Another recent budget commander sleeper, albeit a specific one. If you have three or more colors, and are a creature-based deck, getting back three to five creatures with this is relatively easy, and that’s a great deal for only three mana. Multicolor creatures can count for any of their colors, so they make it easier to get full value for your deck from this.

Great homes range from the new very popular Jodah with legendary creatures, any multicolored tribal deck from Ur-Dragon to Morophon, Alesha, Yarok...

That’s it, a pretty simple card for today.

#sleeper #commander #edh #Streets of New Capenna #rogues gallery #multicolor

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hasdrubal-gisco · 9 months

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downright dirty chicken arayes in homemade flatbread with schug yarok

#i should be taking pics of this stuff

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mtg-cards-hourly · 6 months

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Yarok, the Desecrated

"Its blighted heart, its spinous hands To break the hosts that foul its lands." —*Triumph of Bala Ged*, stanza 6

Artist: Daarken TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #daarken #yarok the desecrated #multiverse legends #legendary #creature #elemental #horror

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justforbooks · 2 years

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The sight of Tevye the milkman shaking his upper torso and stomping out his yearning, melodic, future subjunctive – “If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum / All day long I’d biddy biddy bum / If I were a wealthy man … ” – is one of the most indelible in all stage and film history. It is for ever associated with the irrepressible Israeli actor Chaim Topol, who has died aged 87. He played Tevye in the 1967 London premiere of Fiddler on the Roof and in the 1971 Norman Jewison film version. Topol won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination in the role, attending the Oscar ceremony on leave from the Israeli army.

The musical had been premiered on Broadway in 1964, with Zero Mostel as Tevye. The book of Fiddler was adapted by Joseph Stein from the stories of Sholem Aleichem, the insinuating songs written by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. A fount of Yiddish philosophy (“If you spit in the air, it lands in your face”), Tevye spoke directly to God in the Ukrainian village of Anatevka in 1905 – where, said the theatre critic Milton Shulman, the chief manufacturing goods were schmaltz and lumps in the throat – and came to represent the resilience of the Jewish people down the ages.

Topol (his name means “tree of life”), with his rich bass voice and instant rapport with the audience, was the icing on the strudel. He always deferred to Mostel’s genius as Tevye, and was surprised to be cast in the film. But he brought a passion and warmth to his signature role – which he played on stage in more than 3,500 performances, he estimated – that had possibly eluded the more clownish and hard-edged Mostel.

Topol returned to London in the role in 1983, and toured extensively in the US in the late 1980s, when Rosalind Harris, who played the eldest of his five daughters in the film, played his wife. He faced Broadway at last in 1990. When he played Tevye again at the London Palladium in 1994, he was still only 58. By then, the production and performance – enshrined by contract in Boris Aronson’s Chagall-inspired designs and Jerome Robbins’s brilliant but increasingly overfamiliar choreography – showed signs of creakiness. But Irving Wardle once again hailed Topol’s Tevye as “a living memorial to the comic genius of a tragic people”.

This version toured in Europe, Japan and Australia. Ten years later, Topol and Fiddler returned to Australia, as well as New Zealand, and a farewell American tour soon followed. He played Tevye for the last time in Boston, Massachusetts, on 15 November 2009.

His background had validated the performance. Born in Tel Aviv, Topol was the son of parents who had fled Poland in the 1930s – Jacob, a plasterer who had fought in the Haganah against the British in the war of independence, and Rel (nee Goldman), a seamstress. Like many Israelis of his generation, Topol served in the army in the Sinai campaign, in the six-day war in 1967 (he left the cast of Fiddler at Her Majesty’s theatre, London, for that campaign) and in the Yom Kippur war of 1973.

In the army, Topol, who had two younger sisters, joined an entertainment troupe and then started his own satirical revue company, Batzal Yarok (“The Spring Onion” – “To convey the idea of something fresh, sharp and spicy,” he said). One of his fellow comedians was Galia Finkelstein, who shared his background in the Labour movement and whom he married at the Mishmar David kibbutz in 1956.

Prior to his army service Topol had trained and worked as a printer after leaving school aged 14. He had never considered becoming a professional actor until, after a spell with the Cameri theatre in Tel Aviv, he joined the new Haifa municipal theatre in 1961. His leading roles there included Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Azdak in Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Jean in Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, which the playwright hailed as the best production ever of his absurdist, surreal play.

He was already well known for the character of Sallah Shabati, an immigrant weighed down with troubles and children who somehow overcomes all adversity. This dry run for Tevye featured in his army revues and a 1964 film (his third) that broke all box-office records in Israel and was nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar.

International stardom followed in Melville Shavelson’s Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), a war drama about Israel’s struggle for independence, with Kirk Douglas as the American-born colonel David “Mickey” Marcus. Topol played an Arab sheikh, and underlined his versatility by playing a Russian deserter posing as a Slav interpreter in J Lee Thompson’s Before Winter Comes (1969), alongside David Niven, John Hurt and Anthony Quayle.

Still, when he came to London for Fiddler, he spoke hardly a word of English, and was tutored by the Royal Shakespeare Company voice coach Cicely Berry. He later embarked on a happy association with the Chichester Festival theatre, where he played Azdak again (completely bald) in 1969; the Peter Ustinov role of a match-making general in R Loves J, a musical version of Ustinov’s Romanoff and Juliet, with songs by Julian More and Alexander Faris, in 1973; and Othello, with Keith Michell as Iago, in 1975, presenting the tragic Moor, he said, as “a man of the desert, an Arab, blackened by the blazing sun”.

An attempt to follow the success of Fiddler with another musical scripted by Stein, this time with songs by Stephen Schwartz, The Baker’s Wife, foundered on the road and never reached Broadway. And his later film career never eclipsed Fiddler, though he appeared as Brecht’s Galileo in Joseph Losey’s 1974 memorial record of Charles Laughton’s version for the American Film theatre; as the scientist Dr Zarkov in Flash Gordon (1980); and as Milos Columbo, a roguish Greek turncoat, in For Your Eyes Only (1981), opposite Roger Moore’s James Bond.

His television work included an incomplete project to film all the books of the Bible; The House on Garibaldi Street (1979), about the capture of Adolf Eichmann, with Martin Balsam and Janet Suzman; and the 1983 mini-series The Winds of War, and its sequel, War and Remembrance, in 1987.

Topol’s last appearance in London was in the autumn of 2008, when he played the Maurice Chevalier role of the old roue Honoré in a delightful revival of Gigi by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe in the Open Air theatre at Regent’s Park. As of old, he held the audience in the palm of his hand and discharged his two big numbers – Thank Heavens for Little Girls and I Remember It Well – with a laconic, sideways-on delivery and a generous dose of his trademark confidential charm.

His vivid autobiography, Topol By Topol, was published in 1981, and he compiled a treasury of Jewish jokes and wisdom, To Life! (1994), illustrating both books with his own deft line drawings.

Although he kept a house in London and travelled widely, Topol spent half the year at home in Tel Aviv. He helped to found the Jordan River Village, a holiday camp in lower Galilee for chronically ill children of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, which opened in 2012.

Galia and their children, Omer, Adi and Anat, survive him.

🔔 Chaim Topol, actor, born 9 September 1935; died 8 March 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Chaim Topol #in memoriam

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