I believe Erdogan (and Turkey in general) were big players in getting the wheat trade deal settled, as well as the prisoner exchange, though I could be misremembering. It's just a weird situation of Erdogan having a history of centralizing power, but also making moves to be more relevant on the global stage.

Is it covert if you know it's happening and have agreed to it?

Why is this a news article? Why is this posted to this community? It's a well written article, but it carries no new news, and is just an article by the author of a book that's about to go on sale.

For deck building purposes, I always have Scryfall up, and if I'm doing EDH, EDHRec is something I like to reference to see if I'm missing something obvious.

I want to build a deck largely out of cards I have, and I want it to be my deck, not just what people consider to be the best shell for my commander. But, I can always use a very powerful search tool, and sometimes my knowledge of cards is pretty limited, so seeing what other people are doing can help inspire me to look for similar lines or concepts in my own deckbuilding.

This game gave me my first real experience of melancholy. A sort of bittersweet sadness, born of what was and what could have been.

I'm digging the Lowlands a ton, but I actually didn't spend too much time in Grothmar. I've done the cycle of meta events there maybe 2-3 times total. They're fun and interesting, but when they're not active, I feel 0 compulsion to do anything on that map.

To the Moon is an awesome little narrative. One of the games that reminded me that there's room to feel feelings in games. And the main theme song (I think performed by Laura Shigihara?) is one of my favorite pieces of music to come from a game.

I probably won't end up playing this, as I'm bad at this kind of game, but man does it have styleeeeee.

I wish I liked this art treatment more, but man it sucked to play against in paper.

Compare [[Drivnod]]'s and [[Phyrexian Obliterator]]'s inkblot arts. Just not easily distinguishable across a table, unfortunately.

I think the things look cool as art prints, but aren't clear enough when shrunk to half of a playing card to appreciate.

As a quick question, is this the single largest B&R announcement in Magic history? Bans/restrictions in 4 of the 5 major formats (Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage), each hitting serious meta decks? I'm a relatively newer player, so I don't know if they've ever shaken up so many formats at once.

I know about the Great Designer Challenge question, and I agree that while such a creature would technically fit into those 2 colors, it's not doing a thing that those 2 colors specifically want to do together.

The value of a flyer is to get in around something, and the value of vigilance is to be able to attack and still safely block. Golgari's approach to those goals is usually good removal in black and big creatures (with trample) in green.

Beyond that, you'd have to consider the rate of the creature. 2 mana 2/2 w/ flying and vigilance? Banger in Azorius, but doesn't do jack squat for Golgari. If you go over rate (because green and black both have a number of creatures that are over rate) and get a 2 mana 3/3 w/ flying and vigilance, is that just broken? Even if it's great, does it see play?

Pioneer player here. Thank GOD Sorin and Amalia are gone.

Definitely agree that banning Sorin is a better move than removing Vein Ripper. Sorin existing basically means that they can't print any powerful/high cost vampires ever, and so removing him gives more creative freedom for the future.

And removing Amalia is great because of how the counterplay to the combo was sometimes just pushing for a draw. Not fun for anyone, and the draws just end up pushing the match into turns every dang time.

I feel like I would have been fine with them banning Treasure Cruise and Fable, but I guess they didn't want to just shatter the format, just shake it up gently.

It still exists, but a lot of communities shut down after official matchmaking was implemented.

Back in the golden days of community servers, it sure as heck didn't.

For anyone not into PokemonTCG, this looks like PokemonTCG but will play with different cards and different rules. Energy is different (it looks like you have energy in an Energy Zone instead of attaching to individual mons), the battlefield is different (3 bench spots instead of 5), and so far the cards look to be simplified from actual existing cards.

I believe last time they showed it off it was something like 2 free packs a day, and trading is included (unlike the current digital platform, Pokemon TCG Live).

So overall, it's probably a fairly different game that's looking to simplify the gameplay and introduce the entire "collect and play" thing to people for free. Hook them in with this, and maybe get some people invested in playing "real" PTCG.

Honestly, Pokemon is one of the games with fewer money issues than other TCGs. A tier 1 deck in Pokemon costs $30-$120 for Standard format, which is what most people play, apparently. JustinBasil has good posts detailing the decks and key cards, as well as strategies and example gameplay videos.

I say this coming from MtG, where that price point is only really something you can do in Pauper (commons only format), and a Standard deck will cost $50-230, a Pioneer deck will cost $120-380, and a Modern deck will cost $270-700. In Magic, the most powerful cards (for competitive 60 card play) is the credit card.

Pretty sure YuGiOh and One Piece and Lorcana and Flesh&Blood and Digimon also have more expensive decks than Pokemon. Obviously, Pokemon can get expensive once you try to bring out your deck with special art and special foil versions, but for just obtaining usable competitive game pieces, it's basically the cheapest thing around.

Maybe I'm crazy entitled, but I feel like if I'm spending a few hundred dollars on this piece of hardware, I shouldn't have to pay an additional fee to get some of its basic built-in features to work well.

Cool! I already have a decent PC, but I entered anyways. I'm excited for the new expansion!

Raiding/Fractals/Strikes might be tough to start as a group of 2-3, but you can look for learning groups until you feel confident enough to just join randoms.

I learned to do fractals from following guild members back in the day, and now that I'm coming back after a 6 year hiatus, I'm just doing tier 2 or tier 3 dailies and enjoying them again. Strikes and raids require a bit more work, but they're quite doable as long as you have a good teacher and can manage your mechanics on top of your role.

Not quite the full history. Poggers was based on PogChamp. PogChamp was a Twitch emote, of Street Fighter player/content creator Gootecks from when he and Mike Ross did a silly video bit playing pogs by dropping a fight stick on it.

PogChamp was used a ton on Twitch (and other creators made their own versions of the face), until Gootecks kinda got problematic with his remarks on Jan 6th (and other stuff like alternative health and COVID disbelief). I think they replaced his face with a number of other reactions that also fit the bill?