[Off-Topic] Community Chat Thread

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Hermes_
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Post by Hermes_ » 2 years ago

got a couple of MH2 booster and one of those all foil/art boosters. I had wanted to just get a bundle but they didn't have any.

pulled:
alternate art Gargadon
alternate art Sythis, Harvest's Hand
borderless Void Mirror
foil Solitary Confinement
foil Damn
Calibrated Blast
foilDermotaxi
Serra's Emissary
and lastly Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
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vandertroll
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Post by vandertroll » 2 years ago

I'd take sets with lore like DnD over the upcoming Warhammer crossovers any time. I guess I'm just a romantic
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

Dunharrow wrote:
2 years ago
Can I get some opinions on something?
I sold a bunch of RL cards. I have a newborn and a house that needs a new kitchen and just seems crazy to hold onto this stuff that I barely even play with.

In any case, found out one of the cards, a Revised dual land, is fake!!!
I found in my email receipts that I bought it from an LGS 5 years ago. Price has gone up considerably on this card since then, as you can imagine.

What would you do in that situation?
Side note: I almost never buy from this store anymore because they kept selling my preorders to people at the door and then making me wait months to get my stuff.
All discussions with friends has lead me to believe there is very little chance of the owner of the LGS taking responsibility.
While I think you have very little chance of recouping your cost, you can definitely deal some hideous damage to the lgs's reputation and therefore business. Take pictures and spread your story online like STD-flavored mayonnaise. Carry the card around with you when you play and use it as an educational tool to teach people about identifying counterfeit cards, casually namedropping exactly where you got it along the way. Tell all your friends not to buy high end cards there. Post many online reviews of the store skewering them on every axis you feel aggreived. And last but not least, don't spend another dime supporting the business that cheated you.

When refunds are unlikely and the business repeatedly scummy, it becomes a scorched earth kind of fight imho.
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Dunharrow
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Post by Dunharrow » 2 years ago

Thank you everyone for your feedback. Really don't like this situation!
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Lifeless
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Post by Lifeless » 2 years ago

Do you know for sure that the fake card wasn't swapped by the buyer? I ask because this has happened several times to friends of mine who sell higher dollar cards on eBay.

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Post by Legend » 2 years ago

Krishnath wrote:
2 years ago
RxPhantom wrote:
2 years ago
Anyway, I know this may be a hot take, but I'm not feeling this D&D set at all. I don't play D&D and only have a passing knowledge of it, but everything feels super dated and stodgy. I know D&D has had a massive influence on the fantasy genre, so a lot of these tropes may actually be from their IP, but nothing resonates for me at a flavor or design level.
So far, the cards have been pretty accurate depictions of the tropes, spells, and other stuff from D&D they represent, with one *GLARING* exception: The Tarrasque.

For it to be accurate it needs to both be indestructible and have hexproof. It has neither. The thing is literally unkillable in D&D. Officially, the only way to stop it is to either let it eat its fill so it goes away (which generally depopulates even large kingdoms, completely.), or beat it down to -30 hit points and using a major wish to kill it, which is damn hard to do as the thing regenerates, is immune to level and ability drain, and can't be withered, at all. Oh, and even then, it only goes away for a few years before coming back. Did I mention that the only way to even harm the thing is to get up close and personal with a melee weapon that has an epic enhancement? Because arrows are literally deflected of its hide.
The card should also be legendary, as there is only one on each world, at the most.
Legendary with Ward 10 and Absorb 10 would have sufficed.
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Hermes_
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Post by Hermes_ » 2 years ago

wow 2 years......
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vandertroll
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Post by vandertroll » 2 years ago

Me after seeing the Minsc, Beloved Ranger : '' I'M MAKING A 5C BALDUR'S GATE DECK AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME" (after yelling "go for the eyes boo'')
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Post by Krishnath » 2 years ago

vandertroll wrote:
2 years ago
Me after seeing the Minsc, Beloved Ranger : '' I'M MAKING A 5C BALDUR'S GATE DECK AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME" (after yelling "go for the eyes boo'')
At this point, I am half expecting the narrator/
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Post by Sanity_Eclipse » 2 years ago

On a slightly different note, for y'all players of DnD, is 5th Edition a decent set of rules? Not that I've dived deep into it, but I've seen some complaints about the rules, changes. etc.

Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.
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Post by cryogen » 2 years ago

Sanity_Eclipse wrote:
2 years ago
On a slightly different note, for y'all players of DnD, is 5th Edition a decent set of rules? Not that I've dived deep into it, but I've seen some complaints about the rules, changes. etc.

Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.
I've heard very good things about 5E. All you should need as a player is just the Players Handbook. You can worry about deeper dive books if you have a regular game going.
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Sanity_Eclipse wrote:
2 years ago
On a slightly different note, for y'all players of DnD, is 5th Edition a decent set of rules? Not that I've dived deep into it, but I've seen some complaints about the rules, changes. etc.

Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.


5e is like the king James bible of gaming right now. It's all anyone will play. I prefer 4e still myself as far as game balance and fun myself but good luck finding anyone playing anything else.

It's a fine game just a bit vanilla

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Post by ISBPathfinder » 2 years ago

Sanity_Eclipse wrote:
2 years ago
On a slightly different note, for y'all players of DnD, is 5th Edition a decent set of rules? Not that I've dived deep into it, but I've seen some complaints about the rules, changes. etc.

Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.
I haven't been able to play lately (like the last 4 years) but it was REALLY good when I played before then. It felt quite balanced in a lot of cases so long as your DM is good at pacing. Spellcasters are strong if you don't force them into long drawn out situations that force them to ration their spell slots but so long as you get someone good on DM I felt like it was a very balanced system.
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Post by SocorroTortoise » 2 years ago

5E is a solid system. It's dialed back on a lot of the rules crunch compared to earlier editions, so it's pretty accessible (it was my wife's first TTRPG experience and she's gone all in, including trying out a couple other systems). You're good to get going with just the PHB, though the SRD has all of the basics including class basics with limited subclasses if you want to take a look before spending any money on it. Beyond that, Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything are both very player focused books. Tasha's is the most recent of those and includes some variant class features that are designed to try and better balance some of the PHB stuff and/or open up some alternate options, like greatly improved companions for the beastmaster ranger.

Most of the complaints I've seen have fallen into a few categories:
  • The lack of customization: There's less room to mechanically develop characters if you don't want something that follows the existing subclasses, which hasn't always been true of previous editions. The upside of that is that you don't need to plan out character progression levels in advance and there aren't nearly as many trap options.
  • Poor rules for exploration and social pillars, with the majority of the rules applying to combat: Exploration is largely left to DM discretion, and the occasional feature that interacts with it tends to bypass rather than improve. It's more difficult to run something like a hex crawl without some house rules. Social encounters are similar, where the only thing on the character sheet that impacts them a lot of the time is a handful of skill proficiencies, so it again comes down to DM discretion.
  • Spellcasters having a much higher power ceiling than martials: This is mostly true at high levels. Bounded accuracy means that most martial characters are going to be pretty near their power ceiling in the first half of level progression and don't get significantly different options at high levels, where spellcasters have something closer to exponential growth. This isn't unique to 5E and there's plenty of reasons why it happens. I've played martials as high as 15 and still felt like I was contributing, so YMMV here. According to WotC and the occasional online survey, most play happens at lower levels anyways, so you may not even notice this.
It's at it's best for things like dungeon crawls, which isn't surprising given the pedigree. I'm currently playing in a couple 5E games and I've enjoyed it on the whole. I'm appreciating that the character I have is close enough to the character concept I had in mind without having to put together a spreadsheet to plan out level progression and still end up with a mechanically sound character.

I will say that of the games I've considered running in recent history, the 5E one is a little more appealing for the reason @pokken mentioned. I want to give Stars Without Number a try at some point, but it's harder to get group buy-in on learning a new system rather than sticking with what's familiar. Having such wide adoption is handy for quickly getting a game going and getting into the fun parts, it just makes it difficult to use other systems that might be better suited for the style of game you have in mind.
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Post by RxPhantom » 2 years ago

Two year club baybeeeeeee! I love this place. A big thank you to @Feyd_Ruin and the mod crew.
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Post by vandertroll » 2 years ago

Sanity_Eclipse wrote:
2 years ago
On a slightly different note, for y'all players of DnD, is 5th Edition a decent set of rules? Not that I've dived deep into it, but I've seen some complaints about the rules, changes. etc.

Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.
I started playing 5e (stopped playing at 3.5) and so far it seems really nice. You can find most of the required resources online so you can try them before you decide to commit.
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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

I have been playing DnD in one form or another since 1981, and a good chunk of the funnest moments of my life have involved DnD and other games, and 5E is easily my favorite version of DnD yet. It offers tons of interesting options for character design, with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything boosting those even further by explicitly encouraging players to customize the ability bonuses offered various character races, and it plays very nicely from level one up until at least 15 (the furthest I've gone so far as a player or DM). There are still a few clunky things - some issues would go away entirely if they removed the concept of race from the game and replaced it with species, or just "creature type" - but for the most part it is really solid , and some good work by the player base and some content creators, including Matt Mercer's Exandria supplement, go a long way toward addressing issues of inclusion. If you have a good group of people to play with and are even modestly into TTRPGs, it is pretty hard to not have a great time with 5E.
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Post by JWK » 2 years ago

Sanity_Eclipse wrote:
2 years ago
Not for DM'ing or anything, but what would I need as just a player book-wise, if I wanted to get them for myself? Maybe read up, have a couple different kinda characters set up. Not that I have a group set up or anything, just curious and wanting to prepare for that possibility.
As a player, you can get by fine with the Player's Handbook, but you might like the additional options offered in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (both include lots of additional subclasses, spells and feats) and maybe Volo's Guide to Monsters and/or the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, which offer more options for playing different sorts of creatures (Lizardfolk, Firbolg, Tortles, Tabaxi, etc) as player characters. Tasha's especially includes optional rules for increased character customization, though whether these (or any of the additional material) apply in a given campaign is always up to the DM. Most of the Wildemount book is material specific to Matt Mercer's Critical Role campaign setting, but the player options are easily applicable to any setting (again, with DM approval).
I have 68 active EDH decks, with more in progress. I don't consider this a problem. Do you?
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

(My spiel on 5e and why I really, really dislike it overall-- not something I'm seriously looking to argue back and forth, I just don't really care for it :P)

My fundamental issue with 5e is that they did a great job making it superbly elegant for the most part but then they just threw out the baby with the bathwater on numerous elegant systems from previous editions (stuff like scaling at will powers for everyone instead of multiple attacks as a for instance).

They took so many huge steps back from things that were 100% fixed in 4e that just infuriate me:

0. The balance of short to long rest classes is utterly horked up with the most common scenario being long rest classes are good and short rest classes stink, but it can flip the other way. They're basically never balanced because GMs are so wildly inconsistent with time between encounters.

1. multiclassing is now too good again, after being only really useful to achieve specific themes in 4e

2. casters scale way too well against other classes again, when they utterly fixed that in such a beautiful way in 4e (with the power system)

3. multiple attacks are utterly broken with multiclassing and the consequences of this for some non-spellcasting classes are just unintuitive and lame. They had this fixed in *3rd* edition base attack bonus and then fixed it perfectly in 4e (with the scaling of at will powers).

(The main issue here is that it makes multiclassing to be a Fighter/Cleric or Fighter/Rogue absolutely awful except as 1 or 2 level splashes. They had this working great in 3E with the various BAB scaling and then got rid of it to just somehow make multiclassing less intuitive).

4. Character customization - 3e had such a beautiful feat system and 4e's was great too. Characters always felt unique and different and there were lots of ways to approach builds. Feats in 5e are utter bullcrap - most of them are horrible, and the few people ever pick are almost comically overpowered.

Every character basically winds up feeling statistically identical because of the bounded accuracy and such and how homogenous the abilities are too, which is inevitable in a well balanced game I guess but there's just so little you can really *do* :P

(Side note: 4E had some real boners too but they all centered around using magic items to give keywords to abilities pretty much -- easily patched).




Because of all that clunk they introduced and how simplistic the tactical side of the game has gotten I find that almost every combat devolves to "I move over here and attack" - most of the time there's just not that much variety in how encounters play out.

Coming from 4e which was a system just loaded with control elements and rich tactics - sliding pushing pulling - 5e is like Diablo compared to 4e's Warhammer Age of Reckoning (a narrow reference, I know).

If I want to play something with such a bland crunch system where to do anything fun you need to be using narrative glue, I'd rather just play a game that actually supports narrative elements as a first order part of gameplay like Fate.


Summing up:
5e is too middle of the road for me. It has too much crunch for an RP-first system but not enough crunch for a Tactics-first system. (Plus why would you ever go back to using multiple attacks keyed off class level to scale things, ugh).

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Post by 5colorsrainbow » 2 years ago

I only know pathfinder 1e and 2e (and some star finder) but I've been wanting to learn 5e to run a few magic and raven loft campaigns (or figure out how to convert them to Pathfinder) and hoping to do the strixhaven book when it comes out. I had a group of nerd friends but haven't hung out with them since the pandemic started and one was gonna be the one to teach us 5e so now I've been trying to learn on my own.
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Post by Hermes_ » 2 years ago

i picked up PHB and the DMG and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything due to being at target and walmart.

EDIT: Oddly, the book i've used the most is 3.5's cityscape and that's been for writing and not gaming.
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Post by vandertroll » 2 years ago

Two years have passed already, wow! Props to everyone keeping this site up and running!
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Post by plushpenguin » 2 years ago

I mean, the pandemic basically slowed this place to a crawl for more than half of it.

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Post by TheGildedGoose » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
1. multiclassing is now too good again, after being only really useful to achieve specific themes in 4e
I agree with most of your other criticisms on some level but I have to fervently disagree with this one. Multiclassing hexblade is too good because of that subclass's frontloaded abilities, but most classes are better off staying single classed. That said, my Lore Bard X/Hexblade 2 character is an absolute hoot and I wouldn't trade him for anything.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

TheGildedGoose wrote:
2 years ago
I agree with most of your other criticisms on some level but I have to fervently disagree with this one. Multiclassing hexblade is too good because of that subclass's frontloaded abilities, but most classes are better off staying single classed. That said, my Lore Bard X/Hexblade 2 character is an absolute hoot and I wouldn't trade him for anything.
Hexblade is a huge problem (definitely the worst), but there're a number of other multiclass combos that are bananas.

Most melee classes grossly benefit from 2 levels of rogue after they get 2nd attack and cunning action, massively perverting the action economy.

Paladin is similarly problematically frontloaded with the smite ability (and ability to use other class spells as smites, ugh...I smell hexblade).

Bladesinger's frontloaded int to AC is pretty silly, and you'd be surprised how many builds start with this to cheese out the stat system.

In general I think that they need to just give up multiclassing. It's never balanced, it's never gonna be balanced. It almost single-handedly ruined 3rd edition with the I'm a fighter 2/barb 3/paladin 3/ etc nonsense of fighters (which, BAB was an awesome innovation they just messed up the multiclassing!).

And these are just the things I can personally remember, there's way more nonsense I have dim recollections of reading :P

If you look around at crap people do on the web the optimal builds are basically always multiclassed and they always use some stupid aspect of the rules to generate unfair advantages.

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