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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2271 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 5, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone play MTG here? I've found it really tickles the part of my brain that loves optimization. I have a few friends I run pauper games with on Tabletop Simulator and I've lost track of how many hours I've lost trawling Scryfall to make this one weird idea I have work, only for every single one to lose to my buddy's turbo reanimator that can turn 1 mountain > faithless looting and discard an ulamog's crusher > lotus petal + simian spirit guide > exhume out the ulamog's.

I hate to bring to up, but it's impossible to escape the topic in the year of our Lord 2025: asking chatGPT for deckbuilding advice is a hilariously effective way to see the weakness of current AI. I thought it would be good at this, since MTG is a game with a very cohesive ruleset and every last tidbit of information about every card, mechanic, effect, and interaction is trivially available online. But it will consistently misunderstand what cards do, hallucinate effects, forget simple things like mana costs, or just make outright bad recommendations. I haven't seen it hallucinate an entire card yet, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Old Magic was fun, but I moved to other card games years ago. The newer card designs feel wordier, powercrept and just plain worse to me than what we had back in my day, and the endless tie-ins are ridiculous to me. Netrunner was fun until NISEI (the fan continuation of FFG's reboot of WotC's Netrunner) was skinsuited by the sort of people who run Discord servers and turned into a full-throated progressive organization.

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