It is what it is. What's your goal here, exactly?
To be nicer. Yeah, that's sounds weird, but there's context. In my time at the CPA, too many of the times that I've tried to make points or refute points others made that I thought were spurious, instead of sparking a lively discussion, all it did was cause everything to devolve into aimless bickering over my perceived pedantry. Entertaining as some people might find that, I'm endeavoring to do better. By its nature as an internet message board, this place provides a perfect record of what people have said (up until posts are edited or deleted, but there's not too much of that, usually). For me, this makes it tempting to break everything up into individual claims and dissect them in the manner of an academic debate, perhaps in part because I had some training in doing just that. It leads to a sort of barrage of facts and counterclaims and really doesn't serve any purpose that I'd seriously contend has merit. As though I'm going to analyze what was said, then regurgitate it and expect people to see things in the way that I see them. So I don't want to do that. OK, maybe I do want to do it a little bit, but certainly not in the casual decks subforum!
Are you trying to get me to recant my statement that Dark Ritual is a crutch for people who can't make a black deck without it? I won't.
No, I shouldn't expect that you would. Instead...
Could you do me a favor? No, really. Won't take long. Look back at what you said and think about what you had in mind when you said it. Try to disregard any subsequent discussion. You, Terentius, roughly two years ago, said...
-2 Haakon - moving to a different deck
+1 Hellspark
+1 Visara the Dreadful - a small bomb in-color I got for cheap, though I'm wondering more why my reanimation-only creatures need to be in-color...
-3 Dark Ritual - I use this card as a crutch too often, and this deck doesn't really need it
+1 Lightning Axe
+1 Buried Alive
+1 Mountain
Of course it's not reasonable to expect that you could perfectly encapsulate your own mindset from two years ago. But looking back and trying to think of what you had in mind...
Wasn't the bit about Dark Ritual really just focused on how you didn't like your own use of the card in this particular deck? You wanted to free up the slots to focus on a different approach. Something like that? Maybe? I think so. I could be wrong! I can't read your mind. It's the impression I get, but I'm asking you because obviously you'd know better than I would.
Now, as a side note, I don't consider any Magic card to be a crutch. I did mention that briefly in one of my posts and never elaborated on it. But it's not important. An interesting topic, maybe, but we could start another thread about that if you're interested. Otherwise, I'm content to drop it. If I'm going out of my way to pick on people's word choice then I'm being pedantic. My comment (the one in post #12) was really more about your choice to remove Dark Ritual. It was about the card, not the word "crutch." I consider Dark Ritual to generally be a smart inclusion in reanimator-style decks. Some of the scariest plays in this sort of deck are first turn Ritual into Entomb + Exhume and first turn Ritual into Buried Alive to set up a game-breaking second turn. That doesn't mean any such deck must use the card or the deck is bad! I was just trying to make that point. And when I'm discussing Magic cards,
especially casual decks, I have a habit of touching on topics that cards remind me of. So I went on a tangent about Dark Ritual an its position in the game overall, but that wasn't meant to denigrate you or your deck design choices. I was just sort of spitballing. Like I said, I do it a lot. But sometimes, as in this case, it's not very clear and it's easy for people who didn't know I was spitballing (everyone but me) to read into it and assume that everything I said was meant to make some sort of compelling case. The only
relevant thing I was saying about Dark Ritual in my post was that it made sense as a card in this sort of deck (giving a tempo boost). If I'd just said that, you'd probably have simply disagreed or pointed out that you wanted not to use it here more for stylistic reasons, for the sake of variety or whatever (same reason for not using Rancor in your beasts deck, I think?). But because I threw in that irrelevant commentary without making it clear why I was doing so, it turned into a situation in which we were arguing at cross purposes, both talking about different things and thinking that the other was probably talking about the thing we each were talking about. My mistake. And because of
that, over the course of a few posts, we've both moved away from what was actually said.
I
think that in your original post about cutting Dark Ritual, all you had in mind was that you wanted to take the deck in a different direction, perhaps that you felt you were overusing the card in general or just that you had other cards you wanted to use here instead. But now we've got you saying, "Dark Ritual is a crutch for people who can't make a black deck without it." This brings to mind a pretty extreme situation. Like, these hypothetical players might go to a local game store and play Sealed, open a pool with an awesome black deck, but refuse to play black because they
can't without Dark Ritual. I don't actually know anyone like that. Do you? I can't definitely state that you do not, but it really seems dubious. So if, two years ago, you really did know these strange "can't ever play black under any circumstances without Dark Ritual" people and you had them in mind when you cut Dark Ritual from his deck, then that's one thing. It'd be weird, but I can't rule it out. What I find more likely, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you really just meant the whole "crutch" thing as a personal choice. And in that case, apparently provoked by my confusing rhetoric, you've now
contrived a group of Magic players out of whole cloth and are insisting that I can't get you to recant your statement that you made up about these imaginary people just now. All that would make us
both seem pretty silly, but that's what it's looking like from where I'm sitting...
Are you trying to get me to not poke at those people? For people in my playgroup, I won't, and I don't do it to others. Yeah, it may be somewhat rude, but by nature so is every other disagreement. It's really in jest anyway.
I'm having trouble actually parsing this, but it seems like you're asking if I'd say your should not engage in friendly banter or something. Of course I'm not saying that. I actually have no idea where that comes from, but some of the stuff I said was probably also confusing, so I'll assume it was my fault for giving some such impression. To be clear, no, of course I don't object to friendly banter and such.
I didn't get all bent out of shape when you told me this:
Saying Telepathy is a bad card is kind of implying that players who use it are bad and should be using other cards that are not bad. And I understand why you feel that way and even your reasoning, and agree to disagree, because to me, Telepathy has merit. And style!
Hm, perhaps you didn't get bent out of shape, but you're bringing it up out of nowhere, so you got
something. Two points on this bit...
1. I've known some players who
pride themselves on building decks from bad cards. They take it as a sort of challenge, and some of the decks I've seen them come up with have actually been clever and even good. Those decks won't be sweeping Legacy tournaments or anything like that, but taking a bad card and building around it to create a deck that works is an accomplishment. Because of this, the idea that players are themselves bad for using bad cards
never occurred to me. I had no such implication in mind when I wrote that.
2. I don't think that I should have said that part anyway. I think that post was also like two years ago? I get
why I'd call Telepathy a bad card and I believe that we both understood the issues I was getting at when I called it that, but it's something that I don't think I should do. Perhaps I've changed my mind. It's not that I'd no longer call any card a bad card, but I'd now hesitate to apply that label to Telepathy. Not that the card has become better, but my perspective on these things has evolved somewhat. Another tangent, but the concise point is that I don't think that I should have said precisely what I said there.
In any case, if someone is offended by a comment about a Magic card, that person may be overly-sensitive.
Sure. Considering that there was a point in my previous post in which I stated that I was annoyed, not offended, and then went on to explain why, and considering that I still think that was one of the things I actually explained pretty well, this seems like a rather dubious remark.