Sam Black
@SamuelHBlack
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Retired MTG pro and writer, now I play Magic. Host of Drafting Archetypes podcast. Coaching info in pinned tweet. https://t.co/YGKJI1BlNi.
Madison, WI
Joined February 2009
I offer personalized coaching! DMs are open, and I’m happy to work with clients to figure out the right structure/methodology for their goals. Rates are $100/h for a private session or $75/h for a streaming session (same thing, but we broadcast it).
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Wrote some quick thoughts on how I’m feeling about @MagicEsports during #MythicChampionshipIV
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It’s really depressing that the pandemic was insufficient to trigger at least temporary UBI. So much attention to the spread is blamed on people not wearing masks or whatever, but the real issue is economic pressures that force people not to be safe.
95% of positive tests in a San Francisco neighborhood were among Latinx individuals, even though they comprised 41% of the community. -91% of positives can't work from home.-88% have household income <$50K/yr.-86% have >3 person/home.-55% asymptomatic when tested
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If you don’t think something in your Pioneer deck needs to be banned, you’re not trying hard enough. The victory condition at this point in the format is getting a card banned. If you don’t think your deck will do that’s build a new deck.
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Also, for the record, I believe strategically, WotC should always prioritize paper Magic over digital because I think Magic is the best paper game in the world. I honestly doubt it’s the best video game and it needs to focus on its strengths.
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Contracts signed and it’s official. I’ll be consulting for Magic R&D. Contracts include NDA, so no follow up questions. I’ll still be playing competitively and doing everything else I normally do.
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Morally speaking, I almost always side with rioters. I’m confused by the number of people who state as a fact the claim that riots aren’t an effective tool for leading to change. People have very little power. Most things they do don’t work. Riots seem more likely than most.
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Another example of how cEDH is played, and how it’s not like 1v1.
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I have accepted a position with Cryptozoic as “Game Design Lead Developer” and will be moving to Orange County next month. I intend to continue all of my existing content work, though my streaming hours will be slightly reduced.
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I preferred the years where it seemed like the strength of their organized play system was the untouchable advantage Magic had over other games.
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My free preview card from wotc for MH2, the card I designed during my first consultation contract with them, Moderation! Long story about my goals with this card on my stream, I'll likely write/tweet about it later.
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I and the rest of the Magic community owe a lot to @kanister_mtg. His success inspired me to abandon secrecy and embrace working publicly, something I always wanted, but was afraid to do. This movement away from secrecy toward community is great for mtg. Love to see him win.
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It continues to be really weird that skilled Arena limited players spend nothing and have fully stocked accounts with cards they never use and constructed players spend 100s or 1000s a year regardless of skill.
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Hubris: every time wotc needs to ban cards in Standard, instead of thinking about how hard their job is, I wonder when they’ll hire me.
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Related—how to build a Pioneer deck:. 1: Find a card you think should be banned. 2: Prove it.
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An observation about a thing that seems normal in commander players that I never saw in tournaments: “I built this deck to do a thing, you stopped me, I can’t win, I concede.” For me, that would be where the game gets interesting. You still have creatures, make it happen.
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The best reason Sol Ring is legal is that the banned list is built for casual play. Casual decks aren’t actually going to be balanced, and having such a huge power outlier in every deck means that players with weaker decks get to experience being the threat when they draw it.
Why is everyone happily okay with Sol Ring in their commander decks?. Is it because it’s so easily accessible and cost a dollar? Is it because it’s just “always been this way?” Does it represent a core identity of the format?. Explain. It’s way too powerful and should be banned.
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I think the discourse around casual/social players and competitive players would benefit from considering a framing I haven’t seen discussed. It’s what I’ll call light gamers vs heavy gamers. 🧵.
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It occurs to me that today’s commander ban is structurally different from other bans. Bans a generally a development/balance level change. A card was unbalanced so it’s removed. These cards weren’t removed because they were strong or made someone win, it’s because they….
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I have confirmed that I’m allowed to say the MH2 is the set I worked on.
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Thoughts on this 🧵.
UPDATE: Changes to the banned list:. Dockside Extortionist is banned .Jeweled Lotus is banned.Mana Crypt is banned.Nadu is banned. Additional details: or
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Just so everyone’s clear on how Gray Merchant is going to work in Standard, remember that it will only be played with Bolas’s Citadel.
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I’d add, congrats to everyone who never bothered to learn how they work.
On stickers/attractions:. Good riddance.
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Not granting wild card for The Book of Exalted Deeds because you can play it in other formats you had no intention of playing it in when you made it for your 2022 deck is not a decision I support. @MTG_Arena.
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Everyone likes this.
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Alayna was probably the person most negatively impacted.
I am truly gutted that Jeweled Lotus was banned by the @mtgcommander. I have met literally thousands of players who LOVE this card and who truly treasure it in their EDH deck. It's unfair to do it after 4 years & now it's unplayable anywhere. #unbanlotus
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The response to protests has made it clear that the police are terrorists. They’re using excessive force and escalating violence to send a clear message that attending a protest isn’t safe in an attempt to silence people.
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I miss GPs. If Nathan can’t stay on the PT, no one should expect that they can plan to be on the PT for years. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but this is what I’m getting at when people ask if I’ll be back on the PT—it’s not something you can really choose anymore.
Not my best pro tour performance today! Started 2-0, and then the wheels fell off and I ended up dropping at 2-5. Definitely a painful tournament experience, but super happy with how I navigated the games, and can’t expect much more! Officially off the PT unless I win a ptq :(.
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I dislike this card’s printing in this frame. I think establishing a precedent that there’s a visual queue that a creature is also an enchantment and then breaking that makes it less likely an opponent will notice that they can disenchant it or w/e, so I have integrity issues.
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Do you ever think about how weird it is that there’s a one card banned list in Standard? If you showed everyone who played Magic 4 years ago the full spoiler of current Standard and asked them to guess which card was banned, 0 would guess Rampaging Ferocidon.
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“Non-dysphoric trans” is an oxymoron and I think also maybe my gender identity: I'd prefer to be a woman but being a guy doesn't bother me so I don't transition because the approximation that is available to me isn't worth it.
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Security guy checking ID at the airport, "ok, so how many decks do you have?".
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When people talk about Magic boomers, they have no idea. When I started playing, if you wanted to copy someone's deck and you didn't know them, you had to buy their physical, paperback book.
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If London mulligan broke Modern, our team didn’t find out how. Hoping this is a great tournament and the rule can become part of Magic. Vintage/Legacy players don’t @ me.
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Last picture of one of the best decks I’ve ever built/played before taking it apart
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if getting someone to consent to sex is a struggle, even if they consent, don’t proceed. Enthusiastic consent is the only consent. Sex with someone who doesn’t want it and is just doing it for your sake is pathetic and cruel.
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Fwiw, I’m on team “unban most of the Modern banned list”.
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My goal in Magic used to be to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. These days, I just hope to be recognized as a content creator enough to get one of those care packages wotc sends people. btw, my draft from day 2 of the Arena Open is up on Youtube:
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When it comes to the Commander banned list, you see a lot of “Ban Sol Ring” and “Why is Sylvan Primordial banned,” but really, the first change I’d make is to unban Coalition Victory. It’s hard for me to imagine a table being mad rather than impressed if someone pulled it off.
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Decreased the format’s tendency to accomplish its design goals. This ban is about creating/curating an experience, and that’s categorically different in a way that I think makes it hard for some players to make sense of.
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This is my submission for card that most increases your chances of winning a commander game relative to how much it’s played. It tells you what to watch out for and makes it easy to get players to fear each other more than you. Is it overlooked or disliked?
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I’m sure you’ve already been told this enough times that I’m not changing your mind, but I’m also sure you were prepared to see this everywhere today:. Please vote. (Unless you plan to vote republican, then please stay home and reevaluate your life or the state of the world.).
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Notably, this is the kind of thing that isn’t a reaction to something people wanted (and I think most people don’t want it), but it might be better for long term health (and I think that’s the gamble here).
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Bought some grab bags from @MissouriMTG. TIL apparently the bags are sometimes combined into a super bag
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“Is goyf well designed?” Well, no, it creates a bunch tracking and rules complexity issues, but to make up for it, it was also poorly developed such that it was way too strong, so now everyone loves it. Grappling with such realities makes game design very hard.
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Other people: You can’t ban a card two weeks before a PT, we need to test. Me: my tournament’s tomorrow and I just thought of this deck this morning. I’d say it’s my frontrunner.
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It takes a lot to root against @ReidDuke. Representation is a great start, but @AutumnLilyMTG’s attitude is just delightful. Doesn’t expect anything or take anything for granted, legitimately overwhelmed and delighted by their own success.
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Big fan of the design innovation of making the floor here draw a card when you miss.
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The asymmetry of this is weird—for example, they make Llanowar Elves much better in GW decks than RG decks. I suspect this will lead to strange pressures in deck composition. Not good or bad, just meaningfully different.
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I kind of get the impression that whoever’s directing wotc’s OP decisions might not understand players very well.
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June 1st is my birthday. Killing companions would be a great present.
On Monday 6/1 there will be an update to the Banned & Restricted list impacting the Standard and Historic formats that will also address the Companion mechanic.
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Now that we’ve figured out how to build aggro, combo, midrange, control, and prison Mox Opal decks, I’d really appreciate a ban so I could try other decks.
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I usually don’t bother tweeting super obvious takes, and I don’t know why I’m making an exception here, but streamers criticizing content creators for existing/making money/being proud of their work/success on onlyfans are absurd.
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This is the weirdest part of this announcement to me. They expected the format with no high level support to be popular among more competitive players? Do they understand us at all?
And if you're asking yourself "How does 'card suspension' work?", we have answers! . Check out our companion article, the aptly named Historic Suspension Announcement:
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Since people are debating the merits of open decklists again, I’ll reiterate my proposed solution that only the lands from every decklist are shared. Known archetypes can almost always be deduced from lands, and that’s what scouting sheets usually covered.
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4 Carrion Feeder.4 Gravecrawler.4 Cryptbreaker .4 Thoughtseize .4 Dark Salvation.4 Wayward Zombie.4 Tidehollow Sculler.4 Lazoptep Reaver.4 Relentless Dead.4 Diregraf Colossus.4 Concealed Courtyard.4 Silent Clearing.4 Cavern of Souls.8 Swamp.
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I completely understand why cEDH isn’t for everyone. Most players would hate the spot my last game found itself in:. My opponent Emrakul the Promised Ended me going into a turn where I could make infinite mana and then do basically anything you can think of, but I could concede. .
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I think the reason a lot of people react more negatively than expected to being told that they experience privilege is that it doesn’t match their lived experience. They perceive themselves as experiencing normal treatment. And they’re right.
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Oko should not have been printed, obviously, but I do appreciate how complex playing with the card is. If a card is going to be this good, it should at least be hard to play perfectly.
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I get this isn’t anything new, it just feels important that every now and then we point out how absurd it is that you can’t play the current draft format for ranked play on Arena (I believe everything except casual play should be ranked, which also allows ranked bo3).
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“Listen to women” is one of those sentences that gets thrown around a lot, and I feel like lately it’s taken on kind of a “believe women” connotation. But, like, have you tried genuinely listening to them? I’d say it might be the practice that’s benefitted me most in life.
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My round 5 opponent was very impressed by “that 8/8” which he’d never tested against.
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I don’t talk about relationships publicly much these days, but seeing some posts about polyamory day, and I figured I’d chime in. Lex and I have been together for 20 years, and if we’d been monogamous, my life would be much worse right now, even though I’m not dating anyone else.
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Four versions that are trivially different feels strictly worse than just having one version to me. Just more annoying to deal with/get matching copies with no advantage.
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I knew this would get a lot of replies about how this is bad/cedh is dumb/4 player shouldn’t be a competitive format/whatever. I tweet this stuff to explain what tournament cedh is. If you think this isn’t Magic, you can be right for how you define Magic….
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I think the core of my politics is attempting to be radically pro-compassion.
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When I discuss casual formats, people seem to treat me as if I’m new to casual Magic or an outsider because I’ve played competitively. There are very few people in the world who have played more casual games of Magic than I have.
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If I’m going to answer this I need to do it in its own thread to minimize repeating it. Mana rocks are a scam in commander 🧵.
@SamuelHBlack @seedy_k Alrighty, I think we're gonna need some elaboration on this. Not saying you're wrong, but I only ever hear idiots say this, not people who are actually good at magic. My interest is piqued.
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I like the diversity of Modern and Pioneer, where you might be able to justify only playing 2-3 Oko, where in Standard you have to play 4.
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When I was in high school, before MTGO was out, I organized games of Magic on a forum on AOL. When I created my MTGO user name, I used the same name that I used there in case anyone recognized me. *20 years* later, someone finally did in my twitch chat tonight.
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Talking to my 25 y/o cousin who was homeschooled in an extremely religious community and is just now learning about the rest of the world has been fascinating.
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This is to say I’m functionally a cis guy and enjoy all accompanying privilege, but I think about finding ways to present as more fem a lot and wish I had the courage/confidence/skill etc to experiment more with doing so. Small steps 🤷♀️.
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There’s no way “should I give up a sideboard slot of a card in my opening hand” was ever going to be an interesting question.
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Idk if it’s good, but this is the kind of thing I’d be worried about when I said I wouldn’t unban Opal.
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If I remember correctly, when the current text of Urza’s Saga was pitched I think I responded along the lines of “I guess that could be fine.” I regret that I didn’t instantly identify that it was too much. I should have been able to.
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Quite the plot twist to solve “we need to find a way to make it possible long term for new players to get into Historic” with “we’ll charge 2x for cards that can only be used <half as much.” @MagicEsports.
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It seems kinda weird to have data that players buy more set boosters and concluding that that indicates liking anything about the booster other than “this one has a higher EV.” I’m sure there’s other data that gets into specifics, it’s just weird to not acknowledge the main thing.
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So this list suggests that The One Ring is played in Boros energy and 22% of other decks? (This could be wrong if not all Boros Energy decks play it) anyway, this list makes it look a lot more like Boros Energy is a problem than that The One Ring is a problem.
The One Ring up to 60% of Modern decks. If it doesn't get banned this month I don't know what to say.
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I think I’ve considered writing something for #TDOV for the last few years, but it hasn’t felt entirely appropriate. Still might not be, but I hope it’s close enough.
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Drew into top 8 of GP Tampa with GB Lantern. Kaya is great.
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Banned announcement winners and losers:. Winner: Daybreak Games. Loser: MTGA.
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I agree that as fans, it’s best not to support him. But even if Huey was absolutely wrong to do that, I don’t think it’s an offense worth canceling him over, and even if it never made sense to me, I respect Huey’s decision not to abandon his friend.
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expensive we’re very expensive, and their value came entirely from commander. The RC isn’t obligated to manage the value of cards, but not considering the impact to players is irresponsible. The lost value will be a driving force in many players’ reactions.
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Twitter isn’t ready for a discussion about when to cast a Pact of Negation that you don’t have the mana to pay for. I will not be responding to any replies to this tweet.
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Oh, also, I particularly dislike the lotus ban. There was a time when that was my least favorite Magic card, but I think it does pretty good work at making expensive commanders playable where otherwise cheap commanders are strong.
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