Lab Notes!

  Do I Kill Iron Man? Do I kill Iron Man? I feel like a jerk just typing that. But it's a real question, and it's got me thinking about something bigger: what do you actually know going into a game of Commander, and what are you allowed to do with it? Start simple. You know which commander your opponent is running. That's it, that's the whole information. How powerful is that? And what do you do with it? I've hit this before, thirty years of RPGs deep. There's a word for it there — metagaming. Acting on what you know instead of what your character knows. Commander doesn't have a character to hide behind, so the line moves: it's not fiction vs. reality, it's this game vs. your history with this person . Commander on the table? Fair. Commander you looked up on Moxfield last night? Not fair. Commander you know because you've played this guy forty times? Somewhere in the murky middle. Here's where I land: I'm not building a deck to kill...

    Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced:  Building Three Commander Decks with Purpose The last video I did in this format landed well, so I'm sticking with it — three decks, three skill levels, one philosophy tying them together. "Beginner" Isn't an Insult Let's get this out of the way first: when I say "beginner," I don't mean "less than." I mean simple in structure — and simple is a feature, not a compromise. Case in point: Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim . Out of my thirty-some Commander decks, my ongoing goal has been to simplify — to make games move faster and smoother. It's already a lot to track your own deck's plan, let alone three opponents' plans at the same time. Complexity adds up fast, and not always in a fun way. So when I got the commission for this deck, I went back to basics: strip gameplay down to its core rules and build from there. Play cards that reward you just for putting them on the board. This deck runs twen...

  What Losing Teaches You (That Winning Never Will) I've lost a lot of Commander games. More than I've won, probably. And I've come to believe that's exactly why I'm still playing this game after all these years, and why I've gotten better at it. Winning doesn't teach you much — it's just the game working as intended. You built a deck, you executed a plan, you won. Great. But you don't learn a lot from that outcome, because "it worked" doesn't tell you which part worked, or whether it'll work again against a different table. Losing is different. A loss gives you something specific to look at: You can usually pinpoint the exact moment or decision that cost you the game That specificity means you can fix the actual problem instead of guessing It keeps you from overcorrecting — you're not gutting the whole deck, you're addressing one real weak point Over enough losses, that adds up to genuine improvement instead of ...

  Nobody's Coming for You Personally (And That's Why You Should Play Harder) Derrick from Super Fast Tortoise said something on his morning show that made me stop and think: he wants to play more assertively. Maybe even aggressively. My first instinct was the same one every Commander player has: careful, that's how arms races start. I don't think that's true. Here's why. Two Different Levers "Assertive play" is a mindset. How you pilot. Develop every turn. Take the line instead of waiting for a safer one. Apply pressure. You can do all of that with a Bracket 2 precon. An "arms race" is a deckbuilding problem. Cards getting swapped for stronger cards, session after session, until nobody's having fun even though everyone's winning more. Two different levers. You can pull one without the other. I've watched a totally passive stax pile — hold everything up, combo off turn twenty — that's more of an arms-race deck than an a...

  The Weakest Deck at the Table Still Wins I don't usually do this. Most of what I make lives in the video and stays there. But the deck tech format only gives me so much room — rapid-fire card talk doesn't leave space for the why behind the picks, and some of that why is worth more than a soundbite. So I'm trying something new: a written companion piece to go with the video, digging into the parts that didn't fit. If this is useful, let me know — I'd like to know whether it's worth doing again for future videos, or whether it's better left as a one-off. I don't remember the games this deck has lost. That's not me being modest, and it's not selective bragging either — it's just true. I can tell you the exact turn Whiptongue Hydra cleared a sky full of dragons. I can tell you what it felt like when a $25 deck put a $400 deck in the graveyard. Ask me about a loss, though, and I've got nothing specific. My brain doesn't file those aw...

  Stopping Your Opponents From Winning Is Not As Good As Winning Yourself I heard someone say this recently and it hit me like a ton of bricks. For the first five to seven years I played Commander, I was playing it wrong. Not wrong by the rules — wrong by mindset. I learned to play to stop wins, not to win myself. I've spent the last ten years unlearning that. Nothing has ever said it as clearly as that one line. The mindset I had to break Playing to stop wins feels like playing well. You're reading the table, you're holding up interaction, you're never the reason someone resolves their combo. It looks like skill. But it's a defensive crouch dressed up as strategy — and I didn't actually start improving as a player until I started playing to win. Getting there meant clearing out two specific excuses I didn't even realize I was leaning on: "Money is what's stopping me from winning." This one is comfortable because it's external....

    My Wife Built This Deck Before the Hakbal Precon… and It Might Be Better I played a Simic Merfolk deck last night that honestly caught me off guard. Not because it was optimized. Not because it was full of staples. But because it felt incredible to play . What makes this even better? My wife built this deck before the Hakbal precon even existed. And after playing it, I realized something important: This deck doesn’t win because of the cards—it wins because of the engines . The Turn Sequence That Made It Click Here’s roughly how the game played out: Early setup into Nicanzil Followed by Twists and Turns Then Deeproot Waters Dropped Lord of Atlantis Landed Hakbal Played Spore Frog Then Vorel of the Hull Clade Finished with Shapers of Nature At the time, it just felt like things were “working.” Looking back? I accidentally stacked four different engines . Engine #1 — Go Wide Pressure Once Deeproot Waters , Lord of Atlantis , and Hakbal were online: Every Merfolk created mor...

        The REAL Reason Wizards Keeps Magic Online Alive Let’s be honest—Magic Online looks ancient. The UI feels like it’s from another era, it’s clunky, and compared to Arena… it’s not even close visually. So why is it still here? Because Magic Online does something Arena can’t . First— it supports the full game of Magic. We’re talking Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander… all the deep, complex formats with decades of cards. Arena simply isn’t built for that. MTGO is. Second— it has a real economy. Cards have actual value. You can buy, sell, trade, and even cash out. That means grinders, collectors, and serious players treat it like a marketplace—not just a game. Arena doesn’t allow that. Third— it’s a competitive testing ground. High-level players use MTGO to prep for real tournaments. The rules are exact, the interactions are precise, and the competition is legit. If you want “real Magic,” this is still the closest digital version. Fourth—and this is the big one— i...

  I don’t think Wizards of the Coast is lying about their sales—but I do think they might be measuring the wrong thing. Most of their revenue comes from selling product to distributors and retailers, not directly to players. That means their “success” is based on how much product gets ordered upfront, not how much actually gets opened, played, or enjoyed. And that creates a dangerous gap. Because distributors don’t feel what players feel. They don’t experience product fatigue. They don’t sit down and play Commander. They don’t care if a set is fun—they care if it sells. So if Wizards is primarily reacting to distributor demand, they might be getting delayed or distorted feedback on what players actually want. That could explain why we’re seeing more product releases, faster cycles, and sometimes weaker long-term engagement—even while sales numbers look strong on paper. The question isn’t “Are they making money?” The question is: “Are they building a game players actually want to ke...

  What To Do When Your Deck Overperforms There is a specific kind of frustration that took me a long time to name. It is not losing. It is not even being targeted. It is sitting across from people who have already decided what your deck does before you play a single card — and realizing there is almost nothing you can do about it. I have been there more times than I care to count. The Reputation Problem It starts with your commander. The moment you put it on the table, experienced players run a mental search: I know that card. I know what it does. I know what people do with it. And just like that, the verdict is in. It does not matter that you brewed it differently. It does not matter that your build is slower, greedier, or just weird. They see the name and they see a threat. Trying to argue your way out of it does not work. Saying "I didn't build it that way" lands hollow, because the truth is you did build it to win — just not the way they think. The distinct...

  If you've been playing since the Urza block, the Mirrodin era, the original Ravnica, or even just early Innistrad — you know what I mean. You remember what it felt like when a new set dropped and it felt like a gift, not a product launch. That feeling isn't gone. But it's getting harder to find. The Slopification of Magic: The Gathering — A Game Eating Itself By a long-time player who remembers what it used to feel like There's a word floating around internet culture right now: slop . It refers to the flood of low-effort, algorithmically-generated, quantity-over-quality content that increasingly drowns out anything made with genuine care. We see it in AI-generated images, in streaming content, in fast fashion. And if you've been playing Magic: The Gathering for more than a few years, you've been watching it happen to your favorite card game — slowly at first, then all at once. I've been playing Magic for a long time. Long enough to remember when a ...

  🔥 Why Tibalt Is Secretly One of MTG’s Best Villains At a glance, Tibalt doesn’t look like much. He isn’t a god, a dragon, or a world-ending threat. For a long time, he was even seen as a joke—mostly because his first card didn’t live up to the power level players expected from a planeswalker. But Tibalt was never meant to be the biggest villain in Magic. He’s something much more unsettling. What makes Tibalt stand out is that he doesn’t have a grand plan. Most villains in Magic: The Gathering are trying to conquer something, reshape reality, or impose their version of order on the multiverse. Tibalt doesn’t care about any of that. His entire motivation is much simpler—and much darker. He wants to cause pain, experience it, and push it as far as it can go. That lack of purpose is exactly what makes him dangerous. There’s nothing to negotiate with. No larger goal to disrupt. Pain isn’t a tool for Tibalt—it’s the point. His methods make things even worse. Tibalt doesn’t rel...

  Why I'm Quitting MTG Arena Before It Ruins Magic for Me I've been playing Magic: The Gathering for years, and for a long time, MTG Arena felt like a gift. No need to drive to a game store, no lugging decks around, just fire up the client and play some games whenever I had an hour or two. But lately? Every session ends the same way: I'm fuming, tempted to rage-quit, and seriously considering uninstalling the game for good. This isn't about losing. Magic has variance — bad draws happen, mana screw is part of the game, and sometimes your opponent just has it. What’s grinding me down is the feeling that the game is actively working against my enjoyment. The Endless Losing Streaks and That One Deck You know the pattern. You lose six or seven games in a row. Some are close, some are brutal. You finally get fed up with your current deck, switch to something else — and suddenly you're staring down the exact same archetype that just stomped you for the last hour. It ...

  The New Era of Commander Deck Building: Efficiency vs. the Joy of Jank Commander has exploded in popularity, and with it comes a wave of advice on how to build “better” decks. Recent guides talk about the “new era” of Commander — focusing on templates like the 1-2-3 Utility Conundrum, keeping ramp/draw/removal at 3 mana or less, and “percentile pushing” to hit ideal numbers of interaction while staying on-theme. These ideas make a lot of sense on paper. They help decks run smoother, reduce awkward turns, and let players execute their plans more reliably. But I have to push back a little. I miss the old spirit of Commander — the one where the format was about making cards that were meant to be bad work in ridiculous, wonderful ways. The Shift Toward Efficiency and Synergy Modern deck-building advice pushes hard for efficiency and synergy . Find low-curve utility that lets you ramp fast, draw cards, and answer threats without missing a beat. Look for “sign post cards” that rei...

    MTG Arena · Opinion & Analysis Not Rigged. Just Not Honest. The hidden algorithms shaping every game you think you're playing fairly MTG Arena doesn't cheat. But behind the clean interface and shuffling animations, Wizards of the Coast has built a system of quiet interventions — algorithms that shape your experience without ever telling you about it. That's not rigging. But it isn't nothing, either. Let's get the obvious out of the way: no, MTG Arena is not "fixed" in the sense that some shadowy figure is deciding who wins your ranked matches. Your cards are not being secretly swapped out. Wizards isn't routing your opponent a perfect hand because you skipped buying gems this month. The game is not a casino in a trenchcoat. But here's what is true — and what the company has either buried in forum posts, admitted quietly years after the fact, or never disclosed at all: Arena is running multiple behind-the-...