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@@mcmastergi Oh shoot, thanks for the heads-up!

Yep

I generally just pick 1 and go for it based off what the dice give me on the first roll. And yes he can use both abilities if they have the CP for both of them.

No problem! It was really a huge pain to play Dice Throne again (note all the sarcasm)!

Glad you like it!

It works really well for the most part but it never really was made as a solo.

It is the equivalent of Pokemon's knocked out.

That is the great part of the game industry, all of the games will be there when you get to them!

That shouldn't be too hard, I will work on that at some point this week. I am interested to know if this helps people.

Can you do a gameplay please? 🙏🏻🙏🏻

@@maxtacks0766 I will see what we can do.

@@AssortedMeeples Thank you so much, I love this game but I haven't found any single player variant that I've fully managed to understand. Yours seems to work well but I need some gameplay to visualize the game

It is a very solid game that makes you really think about every choice.

Thanks so much! Welcome to the channel!

Credit to our newest Meeple, Nathan! I (Braden) also loved it!

You bet! This was a ton of fun once we got our feet under us, and deeper than expected - definitely a keeper for the collection!

It really is. I love that it is smashing everything that they wanted from it. I know he is going through Rocketship but I hope the creator is getting a really good chunk of the change from it.

In an earlier video, I said that I felt the bracket system was underdeveloped in its current iteration, and I stand by that. It's also still a very rough draft by WotC's own admission, so using it as a basis for talking about what, in my opinion, can or cannot come off feels far less productive than using my own 15 years of experience playing the format at a wide variety of power levels. Additionally, Commander is a casual format at its core. While that could change under its new stewardship, such a shift is not going to happen overnight, and perhaps not for some time, as a desire to maintain the spirit of the format has been made clear by WotC. cEDH, while a measurable percentage of the format, is not in any way representative of the way the majority of Commander players play Commander. It isn't even remotely close. Frankly, due to the different needs of deckbuilding in that wing of this format, I'm of the opinion it should be split off and have its own banlist, but I also recognize that doing so might do harm to the ability to attract existing Commander players to it. That potential harm would be nothing compared to letting an individual bracket dictate what cards should or should not be banned. You'd fracture the Commander populace into 4 groups by doing that, affecting everyone in the format and creating so much more divisiveness than we experience now.

@AssortedMeeples I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying. This game truly was founded on casual play. Unfortunately, the popularity of the format got too big, and rule zero never really worked. My local store does league for the format, but they just worked directly off the current ban list, which just devolved into a form of cedh. People just started powering up their decks. And I think that's what happened with the current bandlist blow-up. People power their decks up with mana crypts, and then the RC did their ban, so people lost their shit. My locals sure did.

@@kylejacobe627 I 100% agree Rule Zero has been more idealistic than functional from the jump. It is useful for asking questions about whether you can play with stuff like silver-border cards (as many still function within the rules of normal Magic), but has never been a viable tool for reliably discussing power level with strangers or letting people play with cards on the banned list. It is also the proverbial dead horse of the format, and one that I felt the social media portion of the community, content creators, and even the RC themselves overused when criticism came up about pretty much anything in Commander. I do applaud the search for a system that setts a better standard for how a Rule Zero conversation should work when it comes to power level - it's a long overdue quest, likely because finding the answer is not going to be easy, if there is one at all. From what I've observed, people primarily lost their minds because the RC, after having a very hands-off stance toward bannings for its entire existence, implemented two philosophy shifts without warning - a stance against fast mana, and a comparatively heavy-handed approach to banning in the name of format balance. Loss of financial value was the easy thing to blame, because it was the easiest way to demonstrate the consequences of this move, but it's not what people are truly upset about. They worked to get their hands on an expensive, powerful card that was tacitly agreed to be "okay to play" for 15+ years. I 100% empathize with anyone who was upset about losing such a boon to their deck(s), because people like to play cool, powerful cards. What the RC neglected to understand (apart from the fact that communication is important) is that Commander is the modern incarnation of Vintage. You can play almost anything you want, and are encouraged to do so. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a set of power, because 8 of the Power 9 aren't legal, and TImetwister isn't necessary to build a powerful blue deck (though if you have one, it's quite a boon to most decks). Their approach to bannings (or the lack thereof) set the expectation that Commander is a nonrotating format, and if you want to buy Mana Crypts, Timetwisters, Bazaars, etc. to play, you could do so and expect to play them as long as you liked, barring the release of a card that combined with them in a way that made the format unpleasant. The bannings of Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt simply didn't fit that criteria in my opinion (though there is a good argument that Crypt contributes to format homogenization). Dockside had been mentioned by the RC previously, and honestly was too good at what it did. Some would say Crypt and Lotus also fit this category, and there's merit to exploring that. But that exploration should have involved the community to some degree. Like you said, the format's too popular not to try and collect feedback from players. Out of curiosity, was your league pods of 4, or 1v1?

Sure, but there are almost 28,000 unique cards as of this posting that could be Commander legal. In that context, that's actually a really small percentage :)

Or, and go with me on this journey, please no?

I have entirely too many big box games that take up more then a Kallax cubby. Everdell is pretty good on the space utilization for sure. My worst was the original insert for Super Fantasy Brawl, it looked good but used way too much space. For box with no insert in my collection would be Gaia Project, which is a long setup only compounded by finding all the pieces.

I miss read the update that said that and thought it was the boards they were sending but I got a box with all the expansions. I think it is an awesome way to handle it.

Why thank you on all fronts. It is a really good game that has held up well over the years and over lots of plays.

I am cautiously optimistic after the dust has settled. WotC already puts money into designing for Commander, but perhaps their new need to understand the format from a fundamental standpoint will help them temper their designs in a way that does not create Jeweled Lotuses and Dockside Extortionists. I'd wager we'll need 5 years to see the true scope of how this changes card design, but I have significant confidence in Gavin's knowledge, experience, and passion for the format. I've given up on WotC getting Vintage into Arena - I'd pick it up again if they did this and I could have the ability to buy cards on the secondary market like MTGO, but they'd need to dramatically expand that team to accomplish either task. But who knows - it's a brand new world for Commander this week!

@@AssortedMeeples I think they hired John Hight from Blizzard recently. He was the lead from the Warcraft franchise (Hearthstone, World of Warcraft ...). So there is an oppotunity to develop the MtG Arena game :)

V A L U E

Before I go into some more detailed thoughts here, thank you for the critique. I did gloss over this a bit, and there were (in my mind) good reasons for it, but I'll gladly share my thoughts in more detail here for further discussion. In fairness, anytime a card is banned, everyone will take a hit financially who owns that card, informed or otherwise. With that in mind, let's say a watchlist is implemented and another $100 card, say Chrome Mox, is placed on it. Here's how I personally would look at it: "Chrome Mox is in my deck because I feel it will help me get my game plan online in a more reasonable timeframe or ahead of my opponents. Taking it out of my deck will make the deck slower/less optimized, so I'd like to keep playing it as long as I can to optimize my fun. Card will tank for a bit if it is banned, so I could make a quick buck by trading it off for another high end card not on a watchlist. Based on its price history and legality in other formats though, such a drop would be relatively trivial in the long run based on similar bannings, and I could enjoy the card now and sell it later if I wait." I recognize this isn't quite a direct parallel to Mana Crypt or Jeweled Lotus, but I would have looked at them the same way under the same lenses. While these cards don't have a true home outside Commander, they're rare enough to still hold some value, and even if a player is uninformed about a watchlist, it's much more likely that they're going to get the card from an LGS's display case or an online marketplace/retailer than by talking to me and trading me directly. Do stores and marketplaces have an obligation to alert a customer of a card's watchlist status, or is it the customer's job to do their homework before purchasing as you would for a major appliance? Would I be more of a scumbag for initiating a private trade with someone and not telling them about a card potentially losing value than a store/storefront, either costing myself a trade or taking the financial hit in the present before a decision is made? Ultimately, the reason I didn't dive into all these nuances is twofold. First, the RC's statement read to me like the watchlist was a precursor for a nearly certain ban. That's not what a watchlist is for. It's there to put extra scrutiny on a card and assess whether it is truly deserving of a ban via data because you need more information to make an informed decision. And second, I feel like the reasoning provided by them for not providing a watchlist is blown a fair bit out of proportion, so I wanted to present the counterpoint they neglected. This isn't 2000 and the majority of the Commander audience isn't the 6-12 age group - it's teenagers and older. People who have access to the internet and are much more clued in to things like card prices than they were 20-25 years ago. I also feel that walking down this road of conversation begins a slippery slope of questions where you begin to worry about factors that are no longer tied to the health of the format - and if you believe price should not be a factor for whether a card is bannable, you're worrying about something that is irrelevant to your format's philosophy. By extension, whether or not it is acceptable to introduce a risk of the uninformed being taken advantage of isn't something you should consider from a price-centric point of view. I'm going to pump the brakes here, because this conversation then starts to go further down the slippery slope of individual morality, which goes further afield from the points I'm endeavoring to make and Commander as a whole.

This. They didn't say "hey, we are thinking about mana crypt, what you think?" They went about it as "hey, we are worried about fast mana and the speed of the format, what you think?" I personally think this is good, and they learned a lot in how to handle the next one. Now, that is a moot point. WOTC is our benevolent dictator now. I doubt we ever see another ban and most of the bans will be undone. Love to be proved wrong, I'm just less than enthusiastic.

The way the RC behaved, as presented by those in the know, suggests that these were conversations about the subject of fast mana, rather than specific cards (though I'm sure some conversations were had about those as well for the last 3-4 years). They also had an idea that this was going to create some sort of discourse, though as has been astutely pointed out, nobody could have predicted this level of response. I would suggest that the CAG was underutilized and should have been consulted directly about a change of this magnitude. My opinions are based off the info presented and the behaviors demonstrated, and I wouldn't dream of saying I have a perfect picture of what happened. I think keeping the CAG in the dark to prevent leaks, insider trading, etc. was monumentally foolish and shortsighted, especially if they're the ones being trusted to help provide advice on the format. At this point, however, finger pointing is largely irrelevant with Wizards in charge of the format. Gavin has the knowledge, passion, and charisma to guide the format in better directions, and if they follow Pauper's model for community involvement, I think we'll ultimately have many Commander games in our futures, even if the way we got here was absolutely reprehensible.

If anyone other than Gavin Verhey was leading this new group, I'd be much more worried about that. The fact that he's stepping up shows that at least the WotC side of things is putting their best foot forward.

Particularly in the case of Mana Crypt. Card's been around forever, and I've played with and against it a ton. The format's technically better with it gone, but like the Lotus, it has very few places to see play with Vintage being as inaccessible as it is.

@@AssortedMeeples It is very interesting to see all the different game types as when I played there was one way to play the game.

Definitely an understatement - I'm choosing to be optimistic, but it has been hard at times.

Yes!

Yeah, I quit reading for a couple of years, it feels really good to be able to do it again.

You can go to the AEG website and order it through them directly!

Right, simple game to mess with all our minds and see who can count cards/manipulate the best.

@@nephalos666 I (Braden) shall be forever traumatized by that button.

@@AssortedMeeples You and me both, buddy! You and me both!

Truly a great way to make the most of your cameo :D

I am looking forward to the books as much as the games