wickeddarkman

Look at the dates. It's a post being necroed, probably by a nostalgic.
It's either the troll that took out surewhynot or some of the oldies that knew him.

My best bet is it's the troll getting bored because he's given up on down voting me for a while.

He probably tries to relive his victory against surewhynot.
If you scroll among surewhynots work you will find a lot of EDH decks made by his girlfriend. Back then EDH was new, so it might be what the troll was targeting back then.

Look at the decktag: wdm troll
Click on the deck "uncle scruffles"
I copied one of his decks to see if I could reach some of the oldies and piss off the troll at the same time :)

Stream of thought...
Can be used as the kill when you get infinite.
Disrupts your opponent.
Protects your own combo.
Can loop itself, which is why it kills in infinite designs.

At the moment new scientist has an article about how many animals exhibit human like intelligence. They are also wondering how animals do what they do without a language.
I guess science haven't discovered the concept of "posing" that I described earlier :)

Sometimes a few cards break the rules.
Usually a card in any zone (except the battlefield) is considered blank until another card actively searches for some of its characteristics.

I'll try to find a rules reference.
It's in the comprehensive rules 110.1.

Bitter ordeal is only copied the number of times that permanents are destroyed (and goes to the graveyard) on the turn it is cast :)

For some reason a lot of people overlook that. I think I did that myself first time I saw it.
I think the major reason is because people forget that only cards in play counts as permanents. Otherwise they are considered "blank" by game terms.

So in general it is only good for one exile if cast "raw".

No goblin bushwhacker ?
Turn 1 random critter.
Turn 2 burning-tree and bushy, attack for 8 most of your games.

Bitter ordeal is very hard to master in mill.
Especially if there is no board wipe.

I use it myself as a flexible sort of surgical extraction against combo by using a couple of fetchlands at the same turn.

I guess you've misread it.
Happens quite a lot with that card :)

Only in historic/arena.
I've yet to see it in modern.
In modern uro-mill was more of a thing, and later some dredge mill variants became interesting
A few of them could change from being selfmill to milling the opponent instead.

In the past mill almost broke through with some aggro mill, so I've found it strange that cards like relic golem and vantress gargoyle haven't fuelled a revolution there, the "new" nighthawk also seems made for that.

I think part of the balance will be how to protect the deathtouchers enough to have them wall out aggro.
Mill will always be capeable of handling combo and control by default.

At the moment I'm exploring ingest creatures from the eldrazi, and fathom feeder is a deathtouch that needs to be protected, while it also invests.

I guess I could try out a deathtouch mill approach with it :)

Wandered around a bit... damn autocorrect :)

Got bored and wandered around a but.
Mill + infect is unusual, and I like the idea of defensive creatures to support mill.

So have you ever seen someone give it a try with deathtouch + mill ?
I think deathtouch is capeable of being much more defensive.

Oh, forgot to say it was written :)
It's titled "deckbuilding and storytelling"

It covers some of the mental structures in magic, and magic as a game expresses how deep our need is to create them in general.

I like the way that you 'translate' what the quill does, it's a good way to analyse how the game works, but you have to be very carefull that you do not lose anything in that translation.

In this case the card has several stages that needs translation.
First of, the card initially costs 1B and let's you learn.

If it's countered it does not learn, but it only cost you 2 mana to lose it, imagine if it cost 4 outright and got countered, that would really hurt.

In case it isn't countered it may then be destroyed, but then it has already been usefull by replacing itself with a wish effect. At that point you have payed for a non-random draw, a draw where you were in control of what was drawn. Compared to an ordinary draw, this is extremely powerfull. Look at the meta, do you often meet decks with learn? Watch some pro youtubers, are they using learn in their games?

Next stage of the cards effect is equipping, your opponent may destroy it at several times during the game, so the trick is to know when they gain the optimal advantage of doing so.

The optimal time is when your equipped creature is blocked by another creature. By destroying the quill at that point they can have their creature kill yours.

This brings us into a lot of smaller scenarios where you must evaluate how much it costs your opponent to destroy the quill, and the probabilities of them doing it.

If they can't destroy the quill itself it suddenly become a longterm lifegain effect. Do you see any decks in arena that win often in arena by just gaining life? If you do it's good.

If they can destroy the quill, the next question will be if they have any fliers. If you equip the quill on a flier, they must have a flier themselves to get an optimal advantage out of the card. If they have no flier they only unboost your creature and cuts of your lifelink.

If they have a flier and it's a flier that is 1 toughness smaller than your attacking creature, then they will be able to perform the most advantage giving way of destroying your quill. By blocking your creature will die when the equipment is gone and damage is dealt.

That raises new questions, like can you remove their creature in response with some removal, so they gain nothing. Can they counter your removal?

If your head is spinning at this point of my ramblings, then think about how your opponents brain will have to walk through all of this within minutes after the quill is played. Their brain will aim ad the most advantageous play, but we've sort of been through that and know how things are going to play out.

You opponent will either be spending brainpower on remembering what lesson you drew, or they will be caught unaware when you play the card. Confront the past, contain the outbreak and pest summoning represent different sorts of threats to your opponent, so if any of these three cards will affect their decktype, their brain will use energy to remind them of the danger.

So you see, not only does the quill forward your gameplan by giving you a wish draw, it also exhaustes your opponents mental energies while you only need to spend a second or two when casting it or when they destroy it.
Do you know of any games where you lost because you were mentally fatigued ?

At the moment I'm carefully watching cgb/covertgoblue to see to what extend he and others are using learn/lesson because I was actually in the middle of researching wishboarding when new "wishes" were suddenly spoiled. I went from analysing 5 cards to suddenly having 20 more cards enter my study.

I planed to track down all uses of the 5 most recent wishes (one of them being "coax from the blind eternities"),
But instead I just have to pay attention to the next three months to study the effect of wishboarding.

My goal is to find the perfect quantities of how many slots in the sideboard should be there to support wishes in general (like "fae of wishes") and how many cards should be kept as ordinary sideboard cards.

The arrival of learn/lessons couldn't be better for my study, which is sort of why I had the quill in mind :)

Translating a card like you did is a fine mental art, one that I use myself, but it's vital that you never let anything get lost in the translation. Sure it makes it hard to analyse individual cards, but if you use an actual pen and notebook you only need to analyse the card a few times before you have it's secrets written on paper.

Oh, and before I lose track. Mono white lifegain wins a lot by lifegain, and some new witherbloom deckdesigns are going to focus heavily on draining life.

Sorry for wall of texting you :D

Ps. If you like wall of texts, read my newest wall "deckbuilding and storytelling"

Poet's pen for boosting the bats and to learn more.
(Flying lifegain has always been good)

They may be out of flavour, but the pest lessons might work well by having both eyetwitch and poets pen to fetch them, as well as blex to boost them.

Most people use the decktag: arena
At the moment I'm all over the place, but it's used by others as well :)

The paint analogy is rather known in cartoons. Someone is painting the floor, then suddenly realise they end up in a corner with no way out but either walk over the fresh paint or by settling in the corner and waiting. I somehow think there is a limit to the number of mental constructs a civilisation can maintain before collapsing. Since science is still out on how major civilisations collapsed in the past it's possible that it collapsed that way.

I'm working on an article on how to abuse the overall mental construction that players unconsciously build together, and I'll post it within this weekend, it's based on my growing study of mental structures.

Sometimes philosophy produces some great stuff, and modern science is based on concepts produced by philosophy.
One interesting aspect is that a couple of Greek philosophers have had similar ideas on structures, but at some point this way of thinking got burried by religious wars.

I think it was edward Blake that later stated "I must build a structure or be enslaved by another mans" so I'm actually far from being the first. I have the advantage of viewing it through some very modern eyes, having read through Richard Dawkins "the selfish gene" as a young student, and following the evolution of memes through persons like susan blackmore. (I now believe the meme-plex is another intentionally constructed thing developed by people who wants to blame memes for their irresponsible actions, creating a new "the devil made me do it" blame-sink.

I'm honoured by having this conversation with a philosophy teacher, and I recognize that I very much AM a part of the problem, by default, being a human.

I have had a past of being a conspiracy believer, and at a time I believed that koalas were actually aliens in control of the earth. But having darwinistic beliefs and learning about memes (as in "viruses of the mind" rather than the "fun picture, fun text" variant) actually brought me out of it. From there I started taking an interest in how and why I got captured in a mentally virtual world.

I think recognizing that we are not tool users but are actually structure users was how I cracked it.
I'm in the process of gaining the data, and writing about how we build up the structures in the first place.

Like I said I'm writing up how to abuse the way we construct a metagame, and I'll write when it's done.

There are 10 learns and 9 lessons that are common, and there's something for every color.
Then there's also the fact that you get to play a few of the uncommons as well.
I think it will come to all formats where people know drawing is powerfull.

Heh, that could be a silver quill motto:
"Drawing is powerful!"

Poet's pen is bound to be playable.

Out of interest, how much do you guys see sideboards adopt "wishes" with the new learn/lesson mechanic ?
I'm intending to keep track of how wishboards will shake up modern, but none of the "pro's" seem to think it's going to be a thing in modern.

On the other end, wotc has released info that parts of the sideboard in best of 1 matches is restricted from having lessons, meaning that they seem to think that decks with a full sideboard of lessons will become relevant and they have restricted the amount played beforehand from lessons learned within the R&D.

I evaluate that any mechanic that gives you a free draw is going to be powerfull, so what do you guys think is playable in pauper, and do you want it ?

I'm going to try to find the perfect proportion of lessons and ordinary sideboard myself by experiments and surveying modern.

If there's any combo in pauper that generates infinite blue mana, then fractal summoning and pop quiz will be quite a hit I think.

You should try out stream of thought.
Search for the decktag: wdm mill guide
Then click on the "deck" with the cardname.

I've listed several reasons why the card is good, especially in a deck that can go infinite mana.
It serves both as a way to kill as well as a way to search for your combo and protect it.

I've always loved the art of nemesis of reason.
At first you think it's something strange flying over the landscape.
Then you realize it seems to be rising from the water.
Then you figure out that the foremost leg at the bottom indicates that it's been rising for a while already.
The added thought that it's been willing to tear it's own limb bloody to crawl out of the water is somehow numbing. And then you see what it's about to crawl through...

I guess must have missed triumph of the hordes when I looked :)