Mostly Lurking, rarely posting
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Deck Review: Modern Eldrazi
(suggested by @warlord6116)
Man I’m just spitting out new post types aren’t I? This is a kind of post that I think I’ll probably do more of in the future because let’s be honest, sometimes it’s not just a card that annoys us, but the whole deck it’s in.
And MAN where do I even begin with this monstrosity of a deck archetype? For any of you who don’t know, this is a deck that took modern by storm, putting no less than SIX copies in the top 8 of Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch (different flavors but all the same style of deck). The deck is extremely powerful and super annoying because of how it breaks the game and any idea of what deck type might apply to it.
Throughout the history of Magic, the absolute most degenerate decks have been the ones that abuse the mana system. Sometimes this comes in the form of storm decks, which produce huge amounts of mana for tiny costs, other times in the form of decks like Tron that use a more straightforward approach of playing a “ramp” strategy. Eldrazi falls into the Tron camp, but in a much more degenerate way. Much of the deck revolves around two lands: Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple, with Eye producing the most insane results. Using these lands, the deck takes advantage of the cheap Eldrazi that were printed in the newest Zendikar sets. Why is this degenerate? Mainly because those two lands produce 2 or more mana for no cost. Compare this to Ancient Tomb. The cost of using Ancient Tomb adds up very quickly, causing huge amounts of damage, and even then the mana advantage it creates is enough to make it a powerful card in every format it’s legal in. Temple and Eye have no such drawback, only requiring a dedicated deck of Eldrazi, which have much more options available now with the new printings. In addition to this, Eye itself can produce effectively 2 mana per Eldrazi spell cast in a turn. This can consistently get up to 4-6 mana for the deck. A land that produces 6 mana for no cost? Does that sound broken to anyone else?
But of course this (insane) mana advantage means nothing without spells to cast. So what are the culprits that make this deck so strong and annoying? The main culprits are Eldrazi Mimic and Reality Smasher. Smasher is the real problem card here. This card can come down as early as turn two (I’ll explain how in just a little bit) and immediately sets the clock running. The trample clause makes it impossible to block well as it outsizes almost every card played widely in modern, and the haste makes the clock start as soon as it comes into play. Even this would be not too bad if it weren’t for the fact that the card is impossible to interact with favorably. Unless you’re running Shriekmaw somewhere or have a counterspell, the card is guaranteed to get a 2 for 1, even if you have an instant speed removal spell to stop the beat down. Couple this huge, easy to play body with Eldrazi Mimic and you have an absurdly fast clock, usually two or three turns as soon as the swings start. It’s fast, it’s hard to interact with, and there’s no way you’re beating this in combat. The deck just does unfair things super quickly.
Back now to what I mentioned about deck types. The three main flavors, as you know, are aggro, control, and combo, with midrange and tempo oriented decks floating somewhere in there as well. But Eldrazi breaks the mould by bringing the best aspects of every archetype with no downsides. The speed of an aggro deck? There is a possible turn 2 kill with this deck (albeit very unlikely), and a much more consistent turn 4 or 5 kill, plus it adds being hard to interact with to the mix. The explosiveness of a combo deck? The deck is so focused on synergy that, possible turn 2 kills aside, it can produce degenerate board states just from mana production and immediately puts the pressure on to have a way to disrupt it. The late game potential of a control deck? The deck runs a 5/5 with trample, haste, and protection, which again outclasses most modern creatures. It just happens to play it as a 3 drop most often. Some flavors run even more big Eldrazi finishers, but for the ultimate late game potential look no further than Eye of Ugin. Want to make the game drag out long, try to survive the initial onslaught to be on a level playing field? Watch as your opponent gets to tutor up threats every turn. Combine these three aspects and you have a deck that is practically impossible to play against in any feasible way. The best you can hope to do is survive the initial burst of activity and kill them before their true late game potential catches on, which is no easy feat considering how well the deck blocks. It’s so annoying to play against because there’s no counter to the deck. People have been legitimately considering playing Painter’s Servant just to counteract the mana advantage the deck generates so as to slow it down a bit. It’s warping the format around itself.
I haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet though. Y'know how I mentioned the deck doesn’t fit into any archetype neatly? Well this allows it to break the game by running cards meant for the sideboard in the main deck. The deck wants to produce mana and create big threats easily, so it runs Simian Spirit Guide to produce that one extra mana that can push it over the top (especially because the color doesn’t matter). The deck runs no one drops, so it runs main board Chalice of the Void to counter aggressive decks and prey on the rest of the format (possible turn 1 Chalice on 1. Sounds fun to play against right?). Playing colorless creatures? May as well play Spellskite to beat out decks like Bogles that may actually be able to put together a defensive creature base. The deck can run all these situational cards (a lot of which have been featured on this blog) because it doesn’t fold to any of them and doesn’t lose any advantage by playing them. It’s insane and so frustrating to play against because it’s impossible to play against. You can’t expect to win against an opponent who can equal parts kill you on turn 2, kill you on turn 20, counter most of the spells in your deck, and be hard to interact with. It’s just completely unfair to play against. The deck produces huge amounts of mana and uses it stupidly well, and then gets to use the rest of the space to play what might as well be pre-sideboarded cards. You don’t get to play Magic while your opponent is playing an absolutely unfair amount of Magic.
The deck denies you from playing and doesn’t have to be slow to do it. It’s no fun to play against in any way, and one of the worst parts is the absolute lack of counter play. The best cards that counter the deck literally only slow it down. Even Blood Moon, the quintessential aggravating card which preys on decks that run nonbasic lands, doesn’t do much against Eldrazi besides take away the explosive start (the deck even runs a couple copies of Wastes to get around this). When literally 6/8 decks in the top 8 are the same archetype, you know it’s broken. In my opinion the deck might be balanced if Eye of Ugin was banned. Not only would this take away much of the deck’s super explosive nature, it would also remove a lot of late game potential, forcing the deck to play a more feasibly counterable midrange strategy. If Wizards really wanted to kill the deck, it would probably only take the banning of Eye and Temple. But in my opinion, something has to go. The deck is way too strong as it stands, and man oh man is it no fun to play against.
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tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
I’d like to clarify:
dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you can’t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective - there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn’t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.
related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it’s high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:
you see this? this is exactly what I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
I’d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind’s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.
I think you might be onto something…
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve been here for years.
Love
My grandmother took several classes on Dadaism, and I attended them with her growing up. Then I took plenty of art history when I got my BFA in Illustration.
This post is 100% legit in their observations. I’m seriously impressed.
Duchamp’s Urinal was one of the most famous, well known Dada pieces ever made, and he made it purely to prove that literally anything can be art. It was all about ignoring the Establishment’s rules of what art was and wasn’t, - this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
Ever iteration of this post adds something glorious, and I’m so glad you tagged me because I haven’t seen the vaporwave addition yet. A+.
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So now when you do Alt + Reblog, the reblog symbol turns green, “explodes” and then disappears.
the-doctor-and-his-companions:
I THOUGHT THIS WAS KIDDING SOGMLASG
HOLY SHIT((Fuck, I’m on mobile))
If you your on mobile you can just hold the reblog button down
(via twerking-yuga)
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tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
I’d like to clarify:
dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you can’t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective - there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn’t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.
related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it’s high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:
you see this? this is exactly what I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
I’d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind’s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.
I think you might be onto something…
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve been here for years.
Love
My grandmother took several classes on Dadaism, and I attended them with her growing up. Then I took plenty of art history when I got my BFA in Illustration.
This post is 100% legit in their observations. I’m seriously impressed.
Duchamp’s Urinal was one of the most famous, well known Dada pieces ever made, and he made it purely to prove that literally anything can be art. It was all about ignoring the Establishment’s rules of what art was and wasn’t, - this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
Ever iteration of this post adds something glorious, and I’m so glad you tagged me because I haven’t seen the vaporwave addition yet. A+.
