Actually I've been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately

I live in Lincoln NE, so I was curious as to how this came about as well. AFAIK the only "wars" Nebraska gets into deal with either college football, whatever Pete Ricketts is paid to decide is bad for his constituency, and college football.

Right, that's... that's what I said

I pick on Star Trek when it fucks up its playbook, but Star Wars is just not that technical to make it worthwhile. The Force is literally the most hand-wavey DexM in the history of all things.

The Empire has this bad habit of "making examples" of people. Just as Alderaan has to be the target of the original Death Star, so does one (apparently) very visible target to let everyone know just how bamf the Starkiller is.

Also I don't think they can just shoot it all willy-nilly because they have to bleed a star dry when they do it -- isn't it like a 1-to-1 ratio? One star, one shot? So they probably can't just drive the planet around without being extra cautious about where and how it gets from one place to another. I guess.

Well given Kylo's other fairly extreme Force feats, I think they had to do this so we'd know it was the Force and not the Plot giving her the means to ultimately stalemate that match. I mean, we talk about prequel Jedi looking and feeling very different from the original series Jedi, doing combat on wires and making this giant Super Mario leaps into and away from danger, right? Kylo isn't like that; he honestly feels like an extension of the Sith as displayed in Empire/RotJ imho, but oh my God is he on tilt. He doesn't just Force choke, he fucking Force Get-over-heres you if you cross him. He halts blaster bolts in midair -- even Yoda strains to deflect or absorb Force Lightning. Where Vader used standard interrogation tactics to get information from people, Kylo just reaches in and takes the knowledge he wants. He is a moody mikeyfick but Jesus balls, he's powerful.

I kind of winced when everyone 'saw' the effects of the Starkiller from other planets in realtime too, but eh. Apparently it's a "hyperspace weapon" so you can infer all kinds of ellipses logic to explain that one. I'm not going to; it's sci-fi mixed with fantasy, it's a cowboy Western with space magicians and FTL travel. Wars isn't like other series where, like, if someone commits an illegal action fans can go "omfg you can't BEAM THROUGH THE SHIELDS, it's established like 143 times in the series" because a lot of the jargon is pretty loose and never really used to add storyline tension. How fast is "point-five" past lightspeed? Why is the Kessel Run measured in parsecs, at all? How does a laser beam emitted from a Pringles can reflect back on the owner without being hot af to the touch? How does Strong Bad type with boxing gloves on? I know some of these answers are attempted in the EU, but that does nothing for those of us who primarily reference the movies (and from what I understand, the mere act of releasing Ep VII invalidates any post-RotJ EU canon, meaning it's free-range territory for future endeavors and any attempts to resolve scientific inaccuracies are also tossed into the proverbial Sarlacc pit).

The "Rey is OP" arguments have got to stop.

First of all, we have already seen what minimally or never trained Force-sensitive folks can do. Luke blew up the Death Star, ffs. Anakin built C3-PO and competed in a sport which humans were notoriously incapable of handling. Luke spent a whole 2 days with Yoda and learned enough Force Hoodoo to not instantly fold to Vader.

Secondly - and how everyone forgets this, I have no idea - Kylo Ren was holding his insides in while he fought. He got hit by Chewie's insanely powerful crossbow, which is shown to all but obliterate every other thing it hits. Kylo has managed to not only *not* fall into a dozen pieces after this impact but he puts up a bloody good fight against two would-be attackers. He's worn out when Rey starts on him.

Considering Rey already demonstrated her fighting skills on Jakku (whatever her home planet is called) and she gets about as much "use t3h Force, holmes" guidance as Luke did when he started blindly deflecting lasers on the Falcon, I really don't see how this continues to be a point of contention for people.

Finally - and this should be pretty encouraging given JJ's usual one-shot approach to movie making - of ciyrse there are questions about Rey that have yet to be answered. There are two more movies! We have exposition waiting for us over the next couple of years; if Rey's character remains a total question mark by Ep IX, then yeah maybe we have a problem. But for now, I say it's enough story to keep me interested with enough questions to leave me in anticipation. I thought this movie was great.

I felt this was probably the case but I'm such a journeyman in this regard -- the client itself shouldn't have to do much heavy lifting, just get piles of stupid data and do 1 thing with each pile, then send like a JSON object or some jank back to the server.

I say this having done only that app coding which I have had to do to make my job easier, but at the end of the day I would be surprised if there was much more to legitimately expect a client app to handle. Especially if it's a phone app.

You guys are ignoring the elephant in the room, and to not call it by name does not diminish its presence in the slightest. The fact of the matter is, if you're talking about cultivating a positive experience playing a TCG online, you have to talk about Hearthstone.

There is a reason people like Brian Kibler are going on record as saying that the to-go (online) experience is not Magic. To paraphrase Kibler - Magic is a great game. It is not a great video game.

There's a pretty well-traveled article that disagrees with the notion that borrowing against a win is worth the money, either the past or present you could expect to accrue, as opposed to just literally picking money up off the table. One snippet in particular stands out, but on the whole the article dismisses the notion of professional Magic altogether, to say nothing of the money:

I quickly glanced at the tournament schedules for upcoming events here at TMD. This is entirely unscientific of me, so pardon me if I'm way off base -- but it would appear as though the large number of tournaments are upwards of 25 proxies, and many allow an entire deck of proxied cards.

The RL bugs the everloving stuffing out of me, it really does; I consider it a poor move to satisfy the demands of a few at the expense of many who would otherwise be encouraged to play and contribute to the game's oldest format. And I dislike proxies, just because the whole "I know this isn't a real Taiga" thing just kinda gnaws at me while I'm playing (especially since I *used to* actually have fucking Taigas and cannot remember what happened to them).

Nevertheless, with the large number of 25-75 card proxy tournaments out there -- just how big a deal is it that CE cards become legal? As long as any member of the tournament requires proxies, or as long as the event itself permits them, you won't have a sanctioned event anyway. Is it just the desire to have more legal Power and use less proxied cards? Is it actually still an issue of accessibility or membership at this point? It doesn't grow the format through accessibility; consider that as long as 100% proxy tournaments exist, "every card is a Time Walk" suddenly means something more than the original sentiment of the phrase.

I mean really, I'd just as soon have real cards instead of fake-ass proxies, but as with many things that apply to deckbuilding in Magic, the metagame determines the viability of the strategy. If the metagame is full of proxies, then what reason beyond simply owning more legal cards is there to wish for legalized CE?

I'm not entirely trying to troll, just trying to understand why this is something worth discussing when proxies are as rampant and accepted as they seem to be currently.

The bulk of my posts on the subject are definitely in agreement with this point. I don't think he's got what it takes for Trek; he *might* just be more at home in Wars, and given the right individual to collaborate with he can make watchable flicks, but ultimately it's true, he doesn't "get" Star Trek. I liken it to humans meowing back at their cats; the sounds are close, sure, but the language is almost certainly gibberish.

Cat: "hey you're home, whoop-de-doo."
Human: "Well socks in places and?!"
Cat: "...oh just stop."
Human: "Bargle rinse! Incrediblunk!"
Cat: "K"

See, that's why I actually feel slightly better about Abrams in this universe than certain others; he's at least shown that he can be given a sandbox and play in it. It probably only works for him and his writers that he can drum up a series of new people, precisely because by doing so he doesn't have to try and win where he's lost so many times (again, IMHO) -- writing a convincing version of an older character, not just borrowing their likeness to tell a story that *kinda* fits their persona.

Like, the Big 3 from JJ Trek -- Kirk isn't Kirk just because he wears yellow shirts, sleeps with non-human females and sits in the captain's chair. There is an underlying motive to James T. Kirk which has always compelled him to be in the captain's chair and it comes up a LOT in the older movies. Kirk *wanted* that seat, he didn't need to be coached into it begrudgingly by Chris Pike -- and his transition to Admiral facilitates a discussion about what it means for him to drift away from the chair again, not just as a plot point ("oh no i'm not in command because [reasons] how do i get it back") but as part of his character. Quinto's portrayal of Spock is really, really great, but it lacks that strict adherence to Vulcan traditions which he was staunchly devout to, as a way to prove to those who would dismiss him for being half human that he was an exceptional Vulcan -- and I don't think that's his fault, it just doesn't really live in the script. McCoy is just pissy all the damn time, never a country gentleman or as an intellectual who understands medicine, and he never seems to truly be Kirk's sounding board for ideas when Spock is useless.

Now, we can say that "oh, they just haven't told that story yet" or "it's an alternate universe, why would anything be the same" but the problems there are obvious when you treat the stories as proper character studies. The best Trek stories have always been character driven, and the technobabble only exists to facilitate the interaction between personas. Quick example: there's a scene in the TNG episode "The Masterpiece Society" where Geordi and the scientist from the carefully genetically controlled society are working on a way to save the planet from an incoming Bad Thing, and they make comments about how Geordi wouldn't have even been born in that world; would likely have been terminated as a fertilized egg, since they don't allow such genetic deficiencies as blindness into their society. They ramble a bit about pseudo-physics and reach a eureka moment when the scientist asks Geordi how it is that his VISOR doesn't overload his brain from too much information at once. Then they bring the convo full circle by saying -- look, isn't it ironic that this technology developed for a person who could never exist in your world is going to save it! That technobabble just holds the conversation up, moves the story along, but the substance is the characters coming together over it. I don't think Abrams can write that, I think he just leaves big gaping holes where there is supposed to be Starfleet talk about "shields buckling" and "attempting to compensate" and yada yada, and there's nothing intriguing about that. To me anyway. vOv

I like to think I give credit where it's due, even when I don't care for the author behind a given work -- Super 8 is a solid flick. It's definitely the intersection of ET and the Goonies and it is told in the correct time period (1970-something) where you can still have certain plot points and/or character interactions that just would not exist at any point after the creation of the iPhone (mostly because most of these kids would probably have just stayed home and done the whole thing on Final Cut). That said, it's a joint between Spielburg and Abrams - while I think I know which aspects can be attributed to whom, I think it's safe to just call the whole thing a solid joint effort.

Not to be the constant harp about what JJ did to Trek but -- Smmenen nailed it by stating that Abrams is "trading in nostalgia". Maybe I understood an extra meaning there where none was intended - "trading in nostalgia" in the "invariant be" sense of the word. Some people are fur traders, JJ is a nostalgia trader; I think he takes projects like this and relies on the older connections and substance to skirt "hard" storytelling in favor of just being able to say "Remember [this group of characters]? They're BACK in an all-new ADVENTURE!"

I'm nervous that he will simply do as he's done with Star Trek - tell a story which doesn't have a solid grounding in the universe it lives in, just wears it like a skin to get asses in movie seats. So there's nothing tying the story back to Star Wars except for the names and maybe some touchstone imagery. Think Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West; what could have otherwise been actually a relatively enjoyable flick but with an inexplicable tie back to a beloved, somewhat cult-classic series that ends up alienating fans of the original series for countless reasons.

With all that put out there - given the nasty taste the prequels left in my mouth, I really rather want, nay need, this flick to not suck. I will certainly watch it and I will do my damndest to not bring any outside bitter old bastard feelings that I may have accrued over two Trek movies and several (imho) unengaging and half-realized TV series.

I googled around a bit and came across an answer, yes. However, it doesn't seem to jibe with my understanding of how costs are determined in relation to the way Bestow appears to work.

If Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is in play and I attempt to cast Boon Satyr for its Bestow cost, my current thinking is that it doesn't appear to actually become an Aura and lose the Creature type until 601.2g. Once the Bestow cost is paid, it becomes an Aura and per its rules text you're now given the choice of a legal target and so on.

If Bestow actually changes the creature to an Aura as a result of Casting Spells -- 601.2b, then it would affect the cost. If I'm correct in my understanding, though, it doesn't actually happen until 601.2g (during payment), by which point it's too late for modifications.

So, at which point does it actually change types?

I've never trusted Abrams, and I never will. I've never been able to forgive him for the death of my Trek.

Forgetting his Trek reboot for a second, even his other work in isolation just has these recurrent themes that I've never cared for -- characters making logical leaps and covering for knowledge they "shouldn't have" by just having a line or two about how it's sooo obvious and how could no one else come to these conclusions... and he ends up with these Michael Bay-ish scenes and shots where there's a bunch of action and movement but not particularly for any real reason, like the camera guy had ADHD and just wouldn't stop touching the zoom or whatever.

I don't think he creates relatable characters; even when he borrows against established material (cough cough Star Trek cough) there's no tying the individuals back to their originals lifetimes except for their names and titles. Their motives aren't in line with the characters, their lines tend to be more caricature than character, and it's more of that "things are happening and we're saying things and it sounds like Star **** but it doesn't really connect the dots". It's like using a borrowed Internet argument to make a point, and being unable to defend it in person - it's a surface-level understanding of the characters involved, all jelly no toast.

I give each JJ movie I see a "chance", even the Trek ones - and you know, sometimes things are really killer. I *really* liked Super 8, but then again I expect Spielburg stood behind him the whole time, the Al to his Dr. Beckett, keeping him on course. There are moments in various works with his name on them that really work for me, but largely they feel like sketches; a series of pretty-okay ideas that got crapped onto a sheet of paper with strong starts, muddling middles, and endings that just occur because that's what the script says happens.

He might be right at home in Star Wars, but really the only proof will be in the actual content of the script, which the trailer completely dodges save some Palpatine-esque delivery from a disembodied voice. I liked the futbol-bot, the Falcon vs TIE Guys clip, even the wubba-wubba speederbike thing. But there's just not really anything to take away from that preview apart from "things look like this and this and this", so it's hard to make any assessments at all. I have to agree with the critics of the lightsaber claymore thing though - I can't comment on whether the crossguard itself is any use, I'm not a swordmaker, but the kind of swordplay we tend to see in Star Wars is *so* close contact and involves a lot of flashy wrist-work and arcing around the face and body that I have difficulty believing such an instrument plays well with the kind of Jedi combat we're accustomed to.

And what I'd really, really be put-off by would be that somehow, even with Luke as the last of the affluent Force-sensitives around, that someone somewhere just independently realized the prequel-like acrobatics and tactics used by Jedi and Sith of old. The worst part of the powering-up Jedi saw in the prequels was that it shames the swordplay in IV, V and VI - Vader vs. Obi Wan in ANH looks like two Olds hitting each other with canes, compared to their duel in RotS. Espeeeeeeecially after Yoda gets stupid on Dooku in TCW; that guy's like 880 years old and he flips his shit on Count Dookula like a cat in a blender. Obi-Wan can't even muster an overhead strike. Even at its most epic, RotJ never gets that acrobatic. And I prefer that, vastly vastly prefer that to the prequel with its kung-fu-wires approach to combat. It just doesn't logically jive. I know I know, it's sci-fi in the first place, they're space wizards and I'm getting saucy over the details. Silly me.

I don't want to come up with a bunch of reasons to hate the movie before it comes out, and that's what it sounds like I'm doing. I'm really not, I just have a strong allergy to movies that are intended to be visually pleasing with a paper-thin storyline set to a familiar-enough scene, and I'm supposed to be adopting all this emotional involvement from stories that other people told. I can smell when the storyteller expects me to do that, and I can't fucking stand it, so yeah I'm a little wary I guess.

If I read your post correctly, you've indicated that people are damages creatures with toughness-boosting effects that last "until end of turn" during the beginning of the end step and killing them on the basis that the toughness-boosting effect has ended. If that's what you're arguing, that's incorrect -- damage comes off creatures during Cleanup, at the same time as "until end of turn" effects end. Creatures that die as a result of Lightning Bolt at end of turn do so because they have been dealt lethal damage over the course of the turn.

If this were not so, Magic never would have had to endure the Substance mechanic.

It bears remembering that a lot of the trickle-down effect of recent Blue printings are just regarded as unavoidable products of the state of Eternal Magic. The current devs aren't willing to change their vision of Standard just to suit Vintage; card drawing is a Blue thing, creature killing is a Black thing, fat creatures are a Green thing, and so the Delve cards that are immediately playable in each Sultai color reflect that.

With that being said -- Yeah, it kills me that the playable Delve draw card wasn't Black. What a fucking shot in the arm that would have been. Black has been waffling in Standard a lot lately; apparently once effects such as "life loss for profit", tutoring, and non-targeted removal are excised from Standard for being OP, Black becomes a difficult character to pen without making it seem like it's just borrowing against other colors (you know, like Blue, only shitty).

I don't think it is just players bitching and moaning; there have been more than a few cards over the last several years which are arguably much more at home in other colors, or at least would have looked "as appropriate" in other colors, but for some reason ended up in Blue and have shifted Eternal Magic in a strange direction.

I do think it's interesting that the first side effect you mention of a Black Treasure Cruise isn't that people would play new technology or start brewing; but that existing Blue decks would just have made different choices. Perhaps that's telling of WotC's motives right there; it almost wouldn't have mattered what came down the pike, because "the Blue one" would be tapped first and then everything else would fall into whatever role the rogue brewers decide it does. A draw three, even a painful one like the Delve Ancient Cravings you propose, in a non-Blue color, would hopefully make people stop and consider other decks for a moment - but instead, it has to be ceded that Blue is king, and the first best tools should be disbursed to Blue and its decks before dickering around with new tech.

---

Oh, hey, this is the CCF.

Seems fine.

How is it incorrect? Varal simply reminds what rule 514.3a states - that SBAs will also require players to exchange priority before a new cleanup step. Emphasis mine; your quotation seems to affirm this as it references 514 and only says if NO state-based actions occur AND no triggered abilities trigger, no player is given priority during cleanup.

See that just makes me want Siege Rhinos more badly

(as if there weren't more broken uses for Hermit Druid, but you know what I mean)

I'd throw my deck in the garbage if it meant tapping for and going to LazyTown on someone with an X spell.

It's times like this I wish that Magic had more unique descriptors for spells beyond their types.

Like this land wouldn't have to "oops" its way into non-aggro, non-Red decks if there were an elegant way of saying

    : Add to your mana pool for each point of burn damage dealt to your opponent this turn.

Unfortunately it would necessarily have to be pretty ugly, something along the lines of

    : Add to your mana pool for each point of noncombat damage dealt to your opponent from red sources this turn.

Or

    : Add to your mana pool for each Red noncreature spell you cast this turn.

It's hard to actually reward the "right player", but then again that's part of the fun, right -- scoping out odd interactions. Sigh.

I like this story.

Well "letter vs spirit" arguments concerning the RP have typically gone the route of the "can't effect" since 2011, per the Golden Rule of Magic. Take the case of Reverberate; it isn't Fork, but by golly, it's awfully close to it. There's been talk around the Fork vs. Reverberate kerfuffle for a while now, so I won't dredge it up, but the FSV is "we printed Reverberate, people whined -- so we won't make that mistake again".

And sadly I feel like the lack of definition regarding tournament-legal is exactly what makes a single-use card or "official stand-in" card seem less and less likely. I mean compare it to Standard; shocklands aren't currently legal in Standard, right? Any card that comes into Standard is going to be illegal, eventually, unless it is reprinted. Temporary legality of Magic cards is a fact of their existence; the RP mentions nothing about duration, and that could either be a boon or a bust for someone arguing for any product Wizards has to actually print and distribute that stands in for Power.

Even checklist cards, at present, require that the player actually own as many copies of the card as they have checklist cards in their deck. Checklist cards are not proxies. It would be a lot cooler if they were, but as I write this, they aren't. That doesn't mean that cannot change, and if it were going to happen in any way, shape or form, that would probably be it. It just couldn't happen without a fundamental change to what checklist cards actually represent.

....again, blah blah blah, not saying i don't want it just saying there are a slew of things that pre-empt it being quite difficult to ever see a card come from WotC that represent any of the RP cards. Ambiguous wording isn't anyone's ally in these situations.

Hey, if any of the above actually becomes a real thing I'll be stoked. I mean, in a general way, not specifically, since Vintage tournaments currently require slightly more travel than I'm able to put in (maybe once the baby is older I can reconsider). I don't mean to be a Negative Norm or anything, just a bit sour from all the fail that's come along with the RP.

For that matter, the new card border is apparently much more scanner-friendly than the old ones (in that, you *can* actually use one with them), so there could be something to that. You register and have a decklist associated to your DCI number; the TO scans your requested proxy list, doles them out to you, and then you sleeve up and play. On exit, return all proxies to front desk. If you don't return the same ones you borrowed, some frightful consequence as deemed fit by the TO, who answers to Wizards if they lose too many cards per season. Or something.

It's certainly one possibility in the realm of possible possibilities, isn't it. Sounds a bit convoluted, especially if the cards come with some kind of arbitrary expiration date, but it would be a way to try and keep the cards out of circulation.


It's not even my concern I'm voicing, I'd just as soon see the RP dissolved and Moxen fall from the sky like Scott Baio's career.

Look, the Reprint Policy says that WotC cannot print functionally identical, tournament-legal cards. In order to print another piece of Power, it has to be categorically unplayable or digital. Oversized cards, for example -- they could print endless oversized Timetwisters if they felt the need. I'm guessing that the rules-lawyers who scuzzed their way into the 2011 talks that re-upped the Reprint Policy would take action even if the card is somehow a single-serving product. More than that, though -- consider that a system which could dole out official tourney-proxies that occasionally bleeds copies into the hands of the public is exactly the same problem, as it is functionally identical to simply printing new versions of the same cards. After all, the tourney-proxies could be sold at a much lower price than the Beta versions of the same; they aren't legal anymore, right? So you use your "burnt" proxies for everything but the occasional sanctioned event, where you just refill your tourney proxies and carry on.

I mean really understand, I'd *loooove* to see a way around it, but I also know that people suck and lawyers are often paid to sound righter than they actually are, and that all it would take is for someone somewhere to prove that single-use tournament proxies that leak out into the public are precisely as bad as just printing new reserved cards, and the whole deal would be pooched.

I guess what I'm trying to do is obliquely address the specific by generalizing. The point is the nature of the barrier to reprinting doesn't matter (whether it's a literal lawsuit, the threat of one, or simply an unwillingness to break a promise -- that it exists is apparently enough). The point is that WotC cannot print a tourney-only Lotus regardless of its differences from the older cards, precisely because the minute they create such a facsimile, it becomes the next best version of that card and will be used in its steed in the same way as any proxy would. It might have a "For Use Only During GP Barcelona" printed on it, but that won't matter to any person who manages to leave the venue with theirs - at the end of the day, it's a Black Lotus that Wizards printed. Such product would quickly supplant the bulk of existing Plains Edition Lotuses exist (unless someone's super-fond of their effort) and become a de facto reprint for all intents and purposes, save the occasional sanctioned event.

I'd love to see some kind of 'FNM-only' proxy system worked out, but like... how you prevent those cards from just replacing the swaths of Plains Ed Black Lotus out there, I have no idea. And I would wager that the primary use-case for most cards that would be subject to that kind of printing is in that unsanctioned zone already - so it would be tantamount to printing new Lotuses whether that is their intent or not.

The Hero cards, alongside things like Conspiracies and whatnot, do not have the "walks like a duck" problem that an official Black Lotus stand-in has. Convincing proxy cards (and even unconvincing ones) have been the target of legal action from WotC before (and of course I suddenly forget the names of parties involved; I'll try and remember specific incidents and update the post if I can) and I think the notion of official Power 'replacement' cards has the same net effect; they work as well as the real Magic cards they represent, they possibly share the same or similar backing regardless of their border color, they fit into sleeves... like, I don't think there's a way to create "non-functional functional replacements" that don't require a ton of puppyguarding or bookkeeping on behalf of the TO. It isn't like someone who walks out of an event with a "sanctioned tourney only" Black Lotus suddenly finds that all the text falls off and his friends force him to remove all instances of it from his decks before they playtest, right? It's a plastic chess piece next to marble ones, sure, but a rook is a rook.

So I'm playing Type 2 Goblins + Lightning Bolt at this 10-man tournament and my only loss was to this guy in the first round playing like 3-color 10-Land-Stompy. Everyone calls him Squeaky (despise his voice being fairly even and kind of a higher baritone) and his 'thing' is to supplement the Magic experience via his sarcastic commentary, in the hopes that it will put the other guy on tilt. He gets to me, but in retrospect my deck was losing to itself; apart from a few times where I comment about how Lightning Bolts suck against Nimble Mongoose, I just get bad draws that are super bad and he ribs me enough to get under my skin.

I still come in second after narrowly beating this dude playing Trix and sideboarding pretty well (something dumb like very timely resolving fucking Pillage on a single land and then forcing a fork with the player having to choose between "shoot stuff or regenerate" with Manticore, or some damn thing) I hear Squeaky and the Trix player off in the corner like "...blah blah some kid with a Type 2 Goblin deck... blah blah better lucky than good I guess, blah blah..."

For whatever reason it bugs me, probably because it was like my first Vintage tourney and for some reason it sucked to have it be so obvious that I still had training wheels on and so the next time I see some of the guys that learnt me the game I'm like "so this fucken guy, this Squeaky" and they go "ohhh maaaan, ugh" and I guess he's just not a popular dude, and he always pulls that shit, and just ignore/stonewall/whatever that guy, because he's a fishdick.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'm playing, like, Electric Avenue (again, + Lightning Bolts, why the hell not) and my first round pairing is this last minute entry from Omaha, lo and behold it's goddamn Squeaky again.

Now I dunno if he remembered me, or if he had just decided that today he was going to be extra shitty, or what - but he starts the game by cracking a fetch and announcing that he's going to have his graveyard be in the middle of the battlefield. "I'm just going to let my graveyard be right in the middle here, okay? Okay." and he puts his Windswept Heath right in the middle and drops a Nimble Mongoose. Oh good, same poopy deck.

I coulda called a judge probably, I guess, but instead I was like... "there's no way he's going to remember to have a graveyard in the stupid middle of the table, whatever I'll just let him hose himself a few times and be a rules dick about it"

So we play and he casts stuff, and he resolves it - and places it in the graveyard, you know the one behind his library like where most people usually do put their goddamn graveyard. I let it sit and let him pass priority, and then I say, "So, which graveyard are you putting it in again?"

"Oh oh oh right right silly me. Of course." and he puts it in the middle of the yet-to-be-named "the battlefield". We play a little more, I Daze and Force stuff and burn stuff and he eventually puts something in the graveyard behind his library again.

"Look, man," I say, with a smile but a little forcefully, "I'm gonna have to ask you to just have the one graveyard."

"Aaah geeeez" he says, and picks up his battlefield-graveyard and puts it in with the regular yard. It's clear that this particular attempt to troll failed, and from this point on his commentary shifts and he's quieter, less snarky, but still a little hubris-y; he sees Standstill come down over top of my Slith Firewalker and he's like, "...you're either really good at this game or really, really bad. But I'm losing anyway." I shrug it off and kick him around a bunch because he waffles on breaking the Standstill until the Slith Firewalker has like 4 counters on it, and of course I've got a grip of counters and burn for him. We shake on the game and I go on with the rest of the tourney.

Since Ferocious checks for truthiness during resolution, the replacement effect doesn't actually kick in until the spell tries to resolve. So when you're first declaring targets/modes/paying for the spell/etc (casting the spell, IOW), Ferocious isn't a factor.

This confused me too -- in part because a lot of spells with replacement effects tend to rehash the entirety of their effect rather than just modify a piece of it. See cards like Cleansing Meditation; it restates the original effect in addition to its new effect instead of simply tacking on an extra effect if you have Threshold.

I have heard likewise - the print run is apparently incorrect, so this must be a faaaaaake.

It's nice to see some relatively "neutral" buzz about MtG on the Internet; the last things I recall making waves were arguments over Jon Finkel's online dating kerfuffle and "fat man takes pictures of butts at Magic event". Oh I guess maybe the bit about the movie, but who the hell knows if that will be any good in the end.