u/MiningToSaveTheWorld

I know Agenda Phase is one of the reasons this isn't just space risk but still, I never feel good during the phase even if I'm winning something. Just feels tedious trying to navigate the house of cards with the votes and knowing when to go all in with my own votes versus others. Also, some of the options are pretty brutal like the table can just vote to blow up your fleet practically.

It's either fairly inconsequential to the point where the time spent voting feels kinda low value like it didn't really matter so just do whatever. Or it's like, mega nuke a player out of the blue. This disrupts entire engines and can very much cripple you. You can spend multiple rounds carefully getting your tokens up to 5/5/5 for a big play and get wiped down to 3/3/3. The fact this also serves as a fleet nuke is also lame. For me it feels like already too much politics just managing aggro on the galaxy map like you can have 2 players gang you and deal with you that way. Even if you have good influence economy it barely matters, very easy for a light wind to blow you out of whatever outcome. I really don't like this phase

Aside from all that, IRL this point is less true but Online the time it takes is dumb like I have to basically wait through 1-2 hour wait per player to do their votes and a lot of the time its just abstaining or something. A lot of the time nobody even talks like I'm trying to chat with the other players about it and nobody interacting at all so just waiting around for something random to happen. So basically gotta mess around for a day for what could have been a full cycle of tactical actions and strategy cards for something that doesn't give any enjoyment.

Do you like the Agenda phase? Or kinda feel the same way as me?

Speaker pick is beside me and Imperial would likely be a bad pick for him except to block me from getting it. I have the most resource starved slice ever like literally 2/11 OPT between slice and seat. I'm even pretty token starved at this moment until I can dump my influence. I assume he will think I'll get 2 VP off of Imp but not 4 this round so think it's a good odds he wont take Imp.

I'm at 2 VP rest of table has 1. I'm Yssaril neighbors are Naalu and Argent. They all built big fleets R1.

I'm pretty sure I can score two publics and a secret this round plus MR again so I would be at 6 VP. I have to produce ships for the publics but would probably be 5v1ed right?

What's a good balance between gaining VP and not being public enemy? I assume I just skip Imperial even if available to not get too far ahead? Any advice for this situation? How do I play when I have practically 0 resources but am ahead on VP?

Normally I just max out on carrier count with as many fighters as I can and rush carrier 2. I didn't need to think about this much my last games as I kinda had insane resource rolls and faction resource engines and was producing 15+ resource worth of army per round so was maxed on all plastic anyways. I know this is kinda talking like it's space risk and space combat doesn't matter for a lot of the game but sometimes it does in my experience

I'm in a poverty slice this game and need to think more about efficiency and was thinking to do the carrier + fighter approach. I am Yssaril and we have Naalu and Argent in the game which makes the calculation a bit weird for me so hoping to get some advice. Naalu loves fighters but Argent is the destroyer king. So Naalu fighter will counter my fighter and Argent destroyer will counter Naalu and my fighters. Feels like I need to go into Dreadnaughts instead then but I'm really resource starved for that. I was thinking maybe to just skip all that and go for Cruiser 2 instead possibly and try to snipe victory points. But I'm in the lead by 2 VP and pretty sure my home system will be targeted if I don't make it very dangerous to do so.

Not sure if this is getting too complicated for a single discussion but I'm curious in general about some of the factions like Sardak Norr which love fighters with their +1, Sol which have a lot of tangential buffs that improve fighter usage, Naalu obviously. If playing these factions when do you know to not go fighters, is Argent being in the lobby enough to avoid them?

Is it possible to brute force fighters through Destroyers? I assume once Destroyer 2 this doesn't work anymore.

Seems like the random orbital strikes killed the temple solo? This is a design oversight right?

Wondering how far I can go with psychological manipulation and deceit before it's considered bad mannered. I used to play Diplomacy where you basically need to trick people to win sometimes but not always do it otherwise nobody will trust you and the deceit will be useless. Everyone understood that's what the game was so it was pretty clear basically anything is fair game and to conduct yourself as such.

I struggle with being too cooperative in real life and tend to try to avoid conflict. My first few games I was way too nice and gave away a win by not backstabbing someone when I needed to. I've had games where I really should have won but didn't do what it took to do so. I've been making a conscious effort to be more cunning since then.

Since then I tend to be fairly trustworthy then bring out a big deceptive manipulation when it matters. I often work in the manipulation into table small talk to try and highlight things and influence people to act in certain ways. I often do this during the draft even to try and trick people to assume a certain slice or faction combo is good to try and keep the actual slice and faction combo I want open. For example if a player would benefit from taking their central seat tile first I'll try to negotiate with them to let them take our shared seat tile and to stall them. Or I'll trick DWS to give me their promissory to get turn 1 MR without mentioning they are enabling that move. One time I allied with one player to kill the leading player before they won then I realized it would be between me and my ally after my ally had committed forces and dented the leaders victory run. So instead of following up my ally's invasion as agreed I instead invaded my ally's home system after he wasted his forces stopping the winner. This crippled him and let me win afterwards easily.

For all I know all this is dick move to not be invited again but I feel like my main inviter thinks like me so he's cool with it. Not sure about rest of the tables we play but they seem to be pretty sharkish themselves.

If anything I wrote above is considered in poor taste please highlight so I can align with what's considered reasonable in this game.

Not sure on ideal army comp with Abathur. Seems like I always end up with my army being 60% Queens as they tend not to die and I constantly produce them. I mineral dump into roaches which are kinda fodder. They soak up a lot of the biomass though which is a bit of a waste. Also seems like they don't benefit from attack upgrades if I remember correctly? I mix in some Guardians for backline dps. It's hard to get the Guardians biomassed up sometimes.

I've tried Muta ball a few times but hard to get critical mass. Mineral dumping into Roaches for muta ball is good but they tend to eat all the biomass which isn't good. It's pretty fun if I get it up though

Every time I try to untangle any policy or social issue that people tend to discuss on these forums, I always encounter an unsolveable gordian knot where pulling one lever hurts something else or has some cascading effect that results in a net negative. Two examples to follow, but in summary when you actually look into the things people want to happen, realizing those wants would have net negative results for most people involved.

Take the popular opinion about residential property taxes. I was debating with some leftists about this and they said it's stupid to pay property tax on something you already paid for. I explained that property taxes are the primary tax base for the municipality and that pays for your schools, policing, some of the services like water, sewage, with an insane variance depending on State/ Province (generalizing between USA and Canada as I am familiar with both). That money would have to come from somewhere if we cancelled the property tax, so people I debated with said it could come from sales tax. I explain that sales taxes disproportionately harm lower income families and individuals because they spend a higher proportion of their total income on basic costs of living that have sales taxes on them. Like someone making $2k a month spending $500 on food per month, 10% sales tax on the $500 is like 2.5% of their income versus someone making 10k per month with same food bill and taxes, it's 0.5% of their income. Just to be conclusive yes I understand that most of the food bill doesn't have sales tax if it's like raw vegetables but just as a very general example. Like obviously the $10k income probably buying MORE but RELATIVELY speaking, on a percentage basis, the sales tax is impacting the $2k income person more.

After discussing that, they pivot to increasing commercial property tax. I say OK great, now brick and mortar businesses that can already barely pay their lease, their lease goes up by exactly that same amount of the new tax increment, and they have to either increase the costs of what they sell to their customers, or go out of business. Most brick and mortar businesspeople I know are barely making ends meet, like the leases are $4k and they only selling $10k of product per month, after cost of goods they paying themselves a basic living salary. Commercial taxes are already 2-4x the rate of residential as it is. And besides, you'd have to charge an absolutely insane amount to make up the difference for the loss of residential property taxes as those are the bulk of the property tax portfolio.

Then let's look at other cases. Typical anti capitalist 'eat the rich' arguments you see that are absurdly popular on Reddit. Most of the ideas involve some sort of bitterness or hatred of wealthy individuals. You can just feel the seething bitterness dripping off the words of some of these users when they venomously express their ideals. You know what that's led to every time? Something like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, holocaust in Germany, bednyak collaborating with the Bolsheviks to murder and re-appropriate holdings of kulaks in USSR. We realize every time in hindsight that the way things were, were with reason. The kulaks were the conscientious and industrious of the society that made the land productive. Their farms rotted away once the lazy bednyaks had killed them and taken their lands for themselves. Millions starved. This happens literally every time in history when we've had a true uprising of the lower class. You get a bunch of morons that failed at everything else previously in life who achieved power with violence who can't run society worth shit.

All of the preceding paragraphs are a very long example of just two areas where misinformed people think they could do it better. Any time I try to dig into ideas people have to make the world a better place, it's the same shit. No, you would not make the world a better place if your stupid ideas were put into practice. You'd fuck it up 10x worse than it already is. In a best case scenario, you make things worse for a little bit and we revert back to the way things were before the changes. Worst case scenario, you trigger something far worse and we're back to square one in 10 years after a lot of people have died.

We're safer supporting the status quo than any reforms or changes in policy. Especially when you look at the people that have these ideas, they are where they are in life for a reason. They are looking for reforms and changes to the system because they are in a bad place in the system. And most of the time, that is with reason. If we give any of the holders of these beliefs real power we realize very quick they were ill-equipped to deliver any positive change to the world. We're better off with the tyrants we have, the meritocratic ones that at least maintain a somewhat livable system for the most of us.

I really love bio Terran most of my master seasons were as bio Terran so kinda like doing it in coop. Have been messing around with Backwater Marshall prestige on Raynor and curious if you had any ideas about how to use the toolset for Brutal, Brutal+X.

Feels like nomatter how many Medics I get, they always depleted with the higher health pools. Based on this I was mulling around with the idea of not building medics at all or just a small amount to replace stim damage and replacing the armies to leverage their double health.

Also noticed that even with double health, some AI comps still provide so much AoE that even with double health, the Bio can get decimated. Mostly Siege Tank and Storm compositions seem to make bio Raynor struggle. Do you think it's still a good composition?

Not allowed to proxy at most of my LGS so looking to build something that I own most of the expensive staples for already. I own most gamechangers, main combo staple I'm missing is LED and I don't really want to pick that up as I wouldn't use it anywhere else and just don't really like the card in general. After light Googling I think I have a decent base to build Kinnan, or Rograkh/Thrasius (just need Thrasius himself lol) which is probably better anyways. Curious if there's another direction to look into. My favourite decks in lower brackets is Chulane Elf Ball. I assume I want something with Rog in it so I can get turn 1 interaction unlocked with the free commander spells. Rograkh/ Silas looks nice but assume it really likes having LED in it though I own most of the other cards I'd probably want for it.

So my noob eyes see something like Porcelain Legionnaire or Vampire Nighthawk and am like damn that's too good to pass up and I throw that into quite a bit of my decks. Or 1 cmc 2/2s with no downside or tolerable downside. But in a format where we got synergistic 1 drops that fuel infinite combos or value engines feels like grabbing something like a Nighthawk is a waste? What say you?

I hear people discuss about only bringing a few decks out for game night and having issues deciding which decks to bring out.

The scientifically correct answer is that you should bring all your decks. You will increase your mass and therefore increase your gravitational field and stretch space time, slowing the passage of time for you and therefore making you live longer. Furthermore, you are actively harming your playgroup by not bringing your decks by reducing the local mass. You're literally killing your friends by not bringing all your stuff.

Price seems all over the place like some that I assumed would be higher are the lowest and Witherbloom seems more on par with something like a Miirym in terms of demand but it's seeking $15 right now. Do you think these drop in a few months when hype subsides or it's going straight up?

These are only seeing play in EDH right?

Hopefully it's ok I ask here as felt like it was mostly EDH players grabbing this product for the cards, which was the case for me. I got my two Allosaurus Shepherds and haven't touched the rest since. I sleeved them in small deck sleeves so they could be played as Jumpstart but haven't actually cracked it out on a game night over EDH. I understand it's a completely different format but yeah curious if anyone has any experience with it, suggestions for bringing it out for game night etc

Noticing a trend with Dragons, they seem to have a higher floor and ceiling than ubiquitous staples. Are there more collectors of Dragons or they have a premium because they are cool? I invested heavily in Baldurs Gate dragons and all of the good ones are $40+ and were always in the $15+ range even when they first came out. When I compare any of that cycle of Dragons to something like Boseiju Who Endures which can go in any green deck I would assume Boseiju would be much more expensive.

Anecdotally I can assume Dragons are one of the most popular tribes in the game plus people like them for collections just curious if there's more to it.

Have been playing Elves since I was 12 years old. Every time I try to do anything different in creature based decks that have Green I always just feel like Elves would do it better. The play loop of the Elves feels so epic and satisfying every time. It's hard to want to play anything else. I've tried playing big stompy creature decks but they feel lame and clunky when I can just make Elves into big stompy creatures as a win con. The tokens, the mana dorks, the pumping, it all feels awesome.

Curious if you think it's lame to always play one tribe or normal behaviour. What are other tribes in Green that might get me off of Elves for a deck or two. Finally, do you find it fun playing against Elves or too strong/supported for your taste?

Own one set and running Shock, Fetch, and Bond Land proxies in all my decks. Looking to de proxy my decks and read another thread about this that advocated using Pain Lands. Given I currently have two dual lands and fetches for one of them what's a good second set to run.

Failing any advice I think bounce lands are good as it's a form of card advantage too?

Curious on improving my thinking when new cards hit the game. I had caught these immediately when they were released and bought a playset for sub $5 each, and knew they were insane for EDH.

I think at that time the price ceiling for staples like this was a lot lower and $5 actually felt kinda high, like most shocks were only $10ish too. Despite that, feel like I shoulda known to grab more of these even just for my own decks so I don't have to proxy or swap the same set every time I want to play different decks.

Now we see a lot of the Shocklands are cheaper than the Bond Lands. I would have never envisioned Shocklands being less valued than Bond Lands as the Bonds aren't fetchable, but I think Shocklands have been reprinted a ton more. That aspect of them feels surprising and probably unknowable at the time.

I think at this point, we have good data to show that Wizards often won't reprint something like this right away, and let it become a chase card for a future set.

I know someone will come here to comment nobody knows the future or mention putting the same $5 into BTC or something but yeah it's just a general question for others.

1. I noticed weights started to trend towards 1.6-1.65g range instead of 1.7-1.8g range.

2. Light test is kinda inconsistent now. Like some cards seem to not let light pass through as much, to the point I would have thought they were counterfeit in the past.

3. Combination of 1 and 2 had me thinking some cards were counterfeit until I got to point 4 and decided they probably legit.

4. Only thing that seems to still be unchanged is looking at the green dot with a jewellers loupe.

Curious if anyone else had any observations or experience with changes to the cards.