HSM 105: This Land is My Land, Oops All Boardwipes, and A Quick Game

One podcast, mining the magic the gathering community for salt. This is The Howling Salt Mine. It's The Howling Salt Mine. The Howling Salt Mine. Welcome back everybody to another episode of The Howling Salt Mine podcast. The podcast where we delve into those salty salty minds of the magic the gathering community. Find the salty stories, the salty's posts we love, and we put them in our mine cart and bring them right back up to you. Our dear prospectors at home. As always, I'm your host Sam and I'm joined with my two co hosts, Tony and Mike. Say, "Hey guys." Gross, why did you do that? What up, what up, what up? Yeah, why did you do that, Tony? Now we're in the right order. Well, I didn't even know how to react. Yeah, you did not. You did not know how. You did not know how indeed. And before we go any further, hold your horses. You know, we got a shout-out, our nice tier patrons. And this week we have Alex Balix, Cream Bean, Prime Speaker Florian, Yaf D Touch, Dr. Black, Accidental TpK, Royal Flood and ZZ. Thanks for supporting guys. We appreciate all of you equally. We love you all so much. How do you hold a horse? Very careful hands. Two equally stupid answers. I guess one of the rare times there's a stupid question though too. Yeah. Not that rare. Not that rare. You guys suck. No, there's no stupid questions. Classically. You've literally just said my question was stupid. Yeah, except for that one. There's an exception to the rules. Yeah. So I think I'm going to do it guys. I think I'm going to cut my mullet off. Oh, yeah. What has made this decision come to its point? Is it just time for business in the back also? There wasn't even a poll in the discord. Like, yeah, there wasn't a poll in the discord. You know, it's fucking hot. And when you're carrying around like a belt on your head, I hope you'd like that close of us pop in there. All the better to slap water around with. Yeah. I mean, the beaver tail. I'm just imagining you dipping it in water and then like, you know, I do shaking it back in those luscious locks. I literally get that when I go swimming. It's happy for you. I will say like the one benefit of the mullet in the summertime is that it does cover my neck. So I don't have to put sunscreen back there. Is it that long? I don't believe that it's pretty long, man. It's pretty long. It's like, I don't know, three or four inches long. I get pretty long. It's just so curly and pretty. It's just so curly and bushy that it. Someone say too long. We are we are saying too long. Right now. So yeah, I mean, it's just hot. And my hair gets so bushy in the summer from the humidity. Like last summer when I was first growing out the mullet, there was a charm to it because it was short. And it hadn't like reached this length, but it hit this terminal length where I've just kind of maintained there. And now I get a haircut and like a week later, I'm like, I need a haircut again, you know. How long have you had the mullet? What is the legacy of the mullet? I think it goes back to it's definitely before before magic on Philadelphia last year. I remember I had it then. So I mean, I think it's like maybe Christmas last year. I was Christmas 2022. I was probably starting the growth cultivating it. Or maybe January 2023. So it's been a while. It's been like a year and a half with visual changes like this. I love thinking about the group of people that have only known Sam as a person with a mullet. Yeah. Yeah, literally. And that's a lot of magic people. Most people that you have met in the magic community. And like most of the patrons, like by the time photos of us were out there, I had it, you know, you were mulleted. But they're always straight on, you know, like your mullet is not so majestic that it's like seen in photos. It's true. You sort of have a Jordan's furniture mullet. Know what I mean, I don't know what you mean. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Like the Jordan's furniture guy was the tiny ponytail. Okay, I do know what you know. He's got a he's got a big ponytail, dude. And it's sneaky back there. That's the thing about it. It's like a full on. Like you see the picture and it like it's like, oh, that's like a bald dude. Right? No. No, no, no, no. And then he turns his head and you're like, damn, but it knows chill like that. Yeah, this guy enjoys jazz and a good cup of coffee. We'll include a link to the most startling pictures in the show notes. And I'm including one right now for the two boys. Well, I literally just went and looked it up and I was like, holy shit. Yeah, let me let me navigate to this. I've linked to the first image. And it's the, you know, oh, yeah, that's a bald man that you look at that. You're like, that is a bald man. And then there's a whole pony back there. There's a whole it is, it is truly like a ponytail in name and description. Yeah, it looks like horse hair on the back of this man's head. And that's how you hold the pony in some ways. This man has taken the mullet to the absolute extreme. Yeah, that's no hair in the front. And a lot in the back. I don't think that's a mullet. I think that's just like long hair in the back. Well, that's that's the skull it. Oh, that is the skull it. I don't think it's even a skull. It's not a mother. It's true. It's not straight in the way that it would need to be. It's just a bald man with long hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to go back to like super short, cut it all down. And you know, maybe I'll regrow the mullet at some point. But I think I need a moment of different hair to a bar and a. Oh, can you just straight up get a coup a bar cut for like a week? There's not long enough to do the coup a bar of hair. I think it feels like it is. People don't know who coup a bar is. He's from that fucking anime. We talk about you. How could you? That's the one. So speaking of bald men, how do you guys feel when to fairy time? Ravler comes down on the table. Ha, ha, usually not great. I feel defeated when that happens. Yeah. I usually say bad bald man. Bad bald man. Yeah. No, even though to fear is just got like a real tight buzz. He's not bald. Would you say you feel salty usually? I would. I would describe that assault. Is this your way to push us into the meat of the podcast knowing that we have very little time to record this episode? Indeed. And I was going to even save time by not mentioning that fact. Too bad. We got it all in there now. Yeah. Let's get into it. You know, enough of this, enough of this musing on hair. And whether it's a ponytail or a skeleton, I'll let the viewers at home decide that. Let's talk about some salt guys. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, though. Sam. What is salt? Oh, oh, oh, that cat. I love that cat, dude. I'd say I thought of goreons, but same. Oh, yeah. That's a different kind of all. Great question, Tony. Salt is frustration in the game as we like to say here on the Howling Salt Mine podcast. It's really an umbrella term. It's anything in a game of magic that is going to get you frustrated. It could be just as simple as, hey, this is the second time you've played your commander and it's getting removed before you can untapped with it. That will probably get you a little bit frustrated, a little bit salty. And as those grains of salt become more numerous as the shaker fills, the salt gets worse. Maybe it's somebody absolutely pub stomping your pod. They're dropping a thosysorical combo in your recon pod. Or maybe it's just somebody who's being a total jackass and just completely ruining the vibe. And the salt comes from more of like a social side of things. There's a lot of different types of salt out there. And here at the Howling Salt Mine, we want to talk about all of it so that we can learn from it and hopefully not be salty in a future game. It's an educational podcast as we like to say, you know, we've got a little comedy. We've got a little advice, but really we're teaching y'all about salt. And you know what? Learning a little bit about ourselves along the way. That's a nice little addition on there. You know, just trying to bring that after school special energy. Again, we're not a we're not a children's educational show. So it's really more of like after work. Yeah, you guys ready to jump into it here? Let's do it. Why don't you read? Read me a story, Sam. I would love nothing more than to do that. So this first post comes to us from a scoochay. It's ESKUCHE, but I like to say it's a scoochay. And this is a reply to one of our posts that we had on Reddit. So if you ever see a scoochay around the EDH subreddits, you know the drill spread that goodwill. The post is the post says, I don't know, to the post. Yeah, the post goes. The post goes a little something like this. Love the show. Have a salty ish confessional about land drops. I was wrapping up a nice evening at the LGS with three new players who are all fairly experienced. Everyone won ish, so no one was terribly salty. Q the last game of the night. I was on Estrid land in Chantras versus Elmister, Chloride and two other fourth players. Get fucked fourth player. I'd love to get a cruising. A third and the fourth player as two other fourth players. Yeah, that's great. It really gets the idea across. On turn two, I cast a Stoney silence, which the Elmister player foils the counter spell due to having a mana rock out. On turn four, I cast Annex on their hollowed fountain, leading to a salty tapped mystic sanctuary on the following turn and delayed their commander coming onto the battlefield due to not having enough land drops. Oof, I imagine that he can run fewer lands due to scrying with the commander. A few turns later and it could sue onto a different players land. I have a RISTIC study and a RISTIC buddy out. What? S percentile. S percentile for the folks at home. And me because I didn't fucking know. Yeah, Tony. I was going to cut that out, Tony, but now I have to keep it. I attempted to go infinite with a freed from the real on my Guardian Zendicon, which was enchanting a Sarah sanctum, plus I had a bunch of other enchantments in to play. He counters it and rather than do a long boring and Chantras turn this late into the game, I drop a Pyramids and pass. He proceeds to drop an omniscience and starts heavily popping off. He mills me completely out, but cannot close the game out, so he bounces everyone's nonland permanence instead. On my upkeep, I used a hall of Heliod's generosity to recur treachery and end the game with a displacer kitten loop on it. God damn. Some mild salt from the early Annex, leading to me being in the state to be killed first, but clinched the win as a nice closer to a funny evening. Salt rating, low sodium table salt. Okay, there's a fuck ton of cards here. This is also fine, right? There's not a lot of conflict in this narrative. It's a salty confessional. You're just you're just ripping somebody by fucking over their lands. So let's let's hit this Annex for people who don't know. Annex is a enchantment aura. It enchants lands and it costs two and two blue, and it simply says you control enchanted land. That's pretty great. That is fun. Kudzu is also funny. It's one and two green for an enchantment aura for enchant land yet again. When enchanted land becomes tapped, destroy it. That lands controller attaches Kudzu to a land of his or her choice. Oh, that's awesome. So basically you can sack a land to just keep passing around this when you use your land. It dies effect. That's amazing. And then the last one here that I'm not familiar with is Pyramids. It's an artifact from Arabian Knights and holy shit, it's expensive. It's 120 bucks. Cost six mana and it has an activated ability for two mana. It says choose one either destroy target aura attached to a land or the next time target land would be destroyed this turn, remove all damage marked on it instead. That's very interesting. It's kind of like a protection piece. Yeah, so if you have your Kudzu getting put onto your lands, you can activate the Pyramid and then tap that land. The destruction effect will get replaced with the remove all damage effect. And instead it'll just you'll still get to move that Kudzu over onto something else. That's like it's spicy. And then the last one here is Guardian Zendicon. I'm actually familiar with this one. This is from Worldwake. Cost two in a white and it's another enchant land. Surprise surprise. Enchanted land is a two six white wall creature with defender. It's still a land when enchanted land dies return that card to its owner's hand. So you put that on your Sarah's sanctum, which taps and gives you a white for every enchantment that you control and you put a freed from the real on it and hop off. Question there, right? Yeah, you need some blue to untapped, but I'm sure it's there somewhere. Yeah, you're still getting there. And land fuckery will always cause a little bit of salt. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah. We named a bunch of cards in here that people weren't familiar with, but just to kind of like run it down real quick. Basically, this is a story about a land enchantress deck versus a blue deck that was kind of getting hated out on some land, decided to take out all their anguish on this land enchantress player and just really couldn't close it out. And the upkeep displacer kitten loop is spicy as fuck. I mean, this is some like this is some trash magic right here and I love every bit of it. How do you guys feel about annex as a card stealing a land? I mean, it's just like one of those things that like there's no way to get around having people be upset about that. Yeah. The lands are just like it's your resource and you you always expect to have it as long as I draw it and play it, it's mine. And like even a lot of a land destruction things will get you another land if it's like targeted type removal. I don't know if there's any, is there a targeted removal land destruction card that doesn't let you fetch another land? Bruh. Yeah. Yes. Not usually on lands, but like stone rain. There's a ton. It's three mana destroyed target land. I mean, strip mine is the exact same way. Like the other person does not get a land. I'm sure that you know, anyway, most of the time it'll still replace a land like a lot of the time if it's like single singular target removal. And like people are salty enough about that. I mean, like losing like a good land they have ever. Nobody likes anything being fucking taken from them. You know, so don't go build decks solely built around that. I don't recommend it. I mean, I think it's spicy. I don't know. You think it's spicy now, but if you were in a game and it was happening to you, you'd be like, fuck this. You are, you're like, really upset about it. Like, yeah, that is from a distance. You're like, oh, that's spicy. That's cool. But you would be like, fuck you if that happened to you in life. Yeah. I appreciate the tech for the far. But that's okay. That's okay. Like it warps the game. Everyone sees Kudzu come down and everyone is like, okay, if any of us get hit by it, we put it right back on the Astrid Player. Okay. Exactly. And like you establish a plan. You know, like people taboo things at the deck building stage when it's okay to let it get through deck building and just taboo it at the table, basically. Yeah. You don't have to disallow someone from Kudzu in their deck. But as soon as it comes down, you should be doing everything you can to mess with them because they're probably having ways to like abuse that effect better than everybody else. Yeah. I think it's some of these are like, okay, especially in Estrid, where it's like, you're really finding the right deck to do something with these really weird edge case enchantments and stuff. Yeah. So if Commander isn't the place to flex the weird cards and get them involved, like where it's really hard to fit them into any format. So like, I want to allow this personally. You want to allow it because you're the sick fuck that would do it. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. But I think there's there is a balance of like that usually becomes not fun. I would argue of like for you who has built the deck to instantly just like you play the one card now, you're just hated out of the game. So it's like you just have to go and knowing that's going to be the case. Like if like you can build it, you can do it. But like you know what you're doing. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think people do that kind of thing a lot of times and are like, it's not that bad. It's okay. It's just like one land like once in a while, whatever. And like they don't think it's going to be such a bad. Oh my god. I'm literally I'm literally going to change one of the stories that I had planned to read tonight to a different one that is very appropriate to this conversation. Literally, I'm doing it right now. Oh man, I'm probably doing it right now. I don't know. I kind of feel I kind of feel both ways. Like ever since we had cover go blue on the show. And he was like, everything makes me salty. I kind of feel like there's more room for those salty cards. Like I don't think that they need to be fully cut from a deck. In the pregame conversation, definitely mention it. Be like, Hey, I'm going to fuck with lands. Like the point of this deck is that I'm enchanted my own lands to get value. And I'm going to fuck with opposing lands. Be aware of this before we go into the game. It sounds like they're playing pretty high power too with some of the cards listed here. Yeah. But at the same time, like this isn't like a crazy stance. But I think it's okay for those game warping salty cards to exist. And I think it's okay to be fucking salty when they hit the table. And try to hate them out and try to like shift the focus of the game to kind of rebalance. You know, that's the beauty of the four person format is you get to rebalance by saying like, Hey, he's got a kudzu. Like we're not going to play this fucking game. Let's bend it back to the Astrid player every single time. So I think you're both correct here. No, only I'm right. The mic is not right. All right. Well now only mic is right. Yeah. I will say this deck is sounds so spicy though. And uh, it's Gucci and yeah, Gucci. It's Gucci. Please send me a list. I just want to I want to see the list. Please DM it to me on Reddit or wherever you you can. I just I got it. I got to see it. I got to see the list. I want to know all the other weird jankin there to sound so fun. One of the other really funny things in this story was the phrase everybody won ish like yeah, that ish is doing a lot of work there. because I don't think you played four games, right? They were like, we played a couple games. So, yeah, it's just pretty potent in that phrase. Maybe like every, they were all close or something, but that is funny to me. Yeah, I do love that setup where it's like, yeah, you know, everyone won ish, so no one was terribly salty. It's like, okay, so some people did lose and were a little salty going into the game. Yeah. I would just assume that means that everybody like did a thing. Yeah, everybody had their moment to shine, which is usually what it feels like. I feel like sometimes we'll end a game and somebody had a moment and that gets to talk about more than who actually want. Yeah, this person like popped off on this fucking turn. We all had to like either band together to stop it or this other thing and then it's like, hey, but I fucking wine. Yeah, I know. I think that happens a lot with us actually. Like somebody's cool end of the game play will just totally outshide the win. And it's like, yeah, you won, but like you're just pick up the scraps that Tony left with this crazy turn, you know. Yeah, we also, we also have a high enough density of like new decks getting thrown into the pot every once in a while that I feel like those usually take that kind of post game chat spotlight, even if they don't win. Yeah, just exciting to talk about. Yeah, and be like, oh, man, look at what that did. Yeah, yeah, I love that. What do we think about the salt rating here on this one? It's a good salt, man. I agree with what is good taste salt. It's the low sodium table salt. You know, the salt is there. Salt influenced gameplays, getting your lands fucked with and having your plan get messed up for like dropping your commander on the next turn and you know, having your mystic sanctuary coming tapped and not getting that that instant or so or three back on top of your deck does fucking suck. So I get it. Like it's that it's that momentary salt of getting the legs knocked out from under your plan and having to reevaluate and then you're like, well, you know, fuck you a little bit. I'm just going to mess with you. The first opportunity I have to knock someone out, it's it's going to go at the person who stole my land. Yeah, yeah, it's got it. And that's just good target priority because then you get the land back. Should we, uh, should we dig a little deeper? Yeah, let's do it. Let's get into another salty story here, but not too greedily. Just like a little deeper, you know, not too greedily. So jumping off the back of that last one, let's do another Reddit post here. This one comes to us from euphoric ad 6923. So if you ever see euphoric ad 6923 around the subreddits, give me an upvote. You know the drill. Spread that goodwill. Two and one episode folks. And the post is titled I'm always baffled by people realizing the consequences of playing no fun allowed decks. That's kind of a mouthful title. Yeah, it really, it really tells you what it's all about. Yeah. And the post goes short story. And acquaintance ranted to me that her child of a Lara board wipe tribal deck was wasted money because people told her they wouldn't play against it anymore. No shit. I'm apparently, I'm apparently the asshole for asking what did you expect? It's essentially Armageddon plus child with to fierce protection when she has it. When she can't single side board wipe, she'll just wipe until she can. Three hour games later, her friends don't want to play against it anymore and she's mad. I asked her what she expected. She knew her play group and knew it wouldn't go over well. I even told her, but she gloted at her deck building skills. I see this so often. Folks be like, I'll play whatever I want. Fuck you. Then our baffled when folks scoop to go play with people who aren't purposefully being dicks. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with stuff like child of a Lara, turgrid, L.A.S.N.N. Mother of Machines, etc. If your play group is fine with it. But if everybody expresses a constant dislike for board wipes and your baffled your board wipe tribal deck is no fun to play against and people would rather go home than play against it, then you're kind of dumb. Well, that's like, I kind of dumb as maybe a lesson. Yeah. But like, you know, are they wrong? I mean, kind of dumb, kind of lacking situational awareness, you know. Yeah. I mean, this kind of ties into what we were just saying. Like, you can play what you want, salty decks, all that kind of stuff. Salty cards are fine, but like, clearly there is a limit to that. Yeah. I think it comes down to thinking about what you're trying to, it's very stupid corporate speak, but it's all about figuring out what your goals are. When you're deck building, yeah. If your goal is to build something that's going to win, no matter what, right? Build CDH because that's what you want to be doing. Yeah. And then play in fucking junk. Yeah. And then yeah, pub stop. That's what you always say. That is the best way to get wins. It is. But someone's going to think that's real. But like, if your goal is to say demonstrate a cool thing that can be done or make the most of an interesting commander in an interesting way, like, like we just saw with Estard actually, like, do some weird stuff with these enchantments and really take advantage of them in a way that maybe you can't usually, that's all well and good. You start to run into issues when your goals are like, stop everyone from doing stuff over and over again. That's not always to say you can't build that deck, but if it's truly just wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, you're actively not doing anything interesting in your deck and you're stopping everybody else from doing something interesting. So usually one of the things we advise people is like, hey, when you're getting salty about losing, you know, see if you can flip it into like celebrating the success, the other person is having like get interested in what engine they're building, you know, and like, you can kind of enjoy that part of it. If the thing that that other person that's beating you is doing is playing one board wipe a turn, it's not very interesting. There's nothing to like buy into to be excited with on that. So think about why you're trying to build that deck. And if it's winning, in casual, that reevaluate, do something else. Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying, you're Mike. I think one of the weird things here is that she's kind of gloating about her deck building skills and it sort of like kind of goes back to that point. It's like, you know, what is the deck building skill? Like everybody knows you get a crazy board wipe or a super board wipe that hits all creatures lands, obliterate or something like that. And you pair with a two-fiery protection and that's like a great way to win. Like that's not new tech. Surviving board wipes is kind of tried and true. Yeah. And in fact, that's something that normal decks do without being built around it. Exactly. So if anything, you've reduced an interesting niche thing that some decks will do and tried to do the entire deck off of that, which loses its luster. There's this one comment in here, when she can't single-side wipe, she'll just wipe until she can't. That's sort of like a weird thing too, because it's like, what's your game plan there? Like if you're just constantly board wiping and trying to build up to draw the cards where you can do the single-sided wipe, well, what's your game plan after that? You're gonna win with combat damage. If you have no board state, because you've been board wiping every turn. And then you do a one-sided board wipe. It's like, well, you still don't have a board state and your deck is just full of board wipes. So how are you really winning here? Unless it's like a hard lock and you can demonstrate that you can wipe every single turn and no one else can ever get anything back. Then it's not really a wincon. This kind of reminds me of like stack stacks that have no wincon, that just jam stacks, because people become enamored with these effects. They're sort of taboo. So we see this a lot with like new players getting into CDH. They're like, oh, I could finally play stacks. Well, I'm gonna play this big stacks ball. And you just jam a bunch of stacks pieces into the board. And then you're not winning and no one else is winning. And the game is just long. It is kind of this thing where it's like back to your point, Mike. Like, what's your plan with that? What's your plan with this deck? How are you really doing that? Like if you want to have a one-sided board wipe with Armageddon and Tafir's protection, one, you're gonna make some people salty just with MLD. As we like to say, the best way to reduce the salt on that is to have a quick win right afterwards. And that's two cards out of a 100 card deck. Like your whole deck doesn't need to be packed full of board wipes for that. You can have a small package of board wipes. And some would say like a normally sized, average sized package too. Someone say the package is too big. So you can have that piece in your deck and still get to that end game state that you want. I broke my quit. I can see the title small and big packages. No, no. But you know what I'm saying? Like you can still have that element that you find mechanically interesting, but having an attack that actually has a real game plan and gets you there. Has card draw has all this kind of acceleration to actually get you to that game state. Yeah, it's not about the size of the package. It's about the content of the parcel being delivered. Yeah. Oh, man. Have you guys ever played against a child of a Lara deck or like a board wipe tribal deck? No. It feels like I have every time I play the play. Oh my god. You always play like two or three. A fucking game. And that is lander. No, but I do have a guy you guys lander me when I'm not on. I mean, that's all founded though. Yeah, that's just what we're just speaking truth. Yeah, the content that makes it into the episodes is correct. And the stuff that I edit out that you say about me, that's supposed to be edited out because it's wrong. Right. Right. It makes sense. I don't think I've ever really played against like a truly board wipe tribal deck like that though. I would probably scoop and walk away. Yeah. like I get annoyed enough when you play one or two. If you're playing a second one in a game I'm in with you, I'm about ready to fucking walk away. So like if you are doing it every turn I would be like, all right, I'm done. Like have fun circle drinking your fucking self over there with your board like in that board. Yeah. Have fun wiping. Dude, I played against one. My friend Matt had a child of a Lara board wipe deck like literally like this. And we were playing against it and he finally got child of a Lara down and then sacked it to something and everything got destroyed. And then the next turn he like recast shot of our and starts to do it again. And I'm like, what are you? Is this what the deck does? He's like, yeah, this is what the deck does. I'm like, we can't we can't be doing this. We can't play this game. I can't play this game. What are you doing? And I don't really remember what he did. I think he just was like, all right, well, I just won't cast child of a Lara like he just kind of stopped playing his deck so that we could continue to play a game. Like that's not fun either. Yeah. It was just unfun for everybody. I think it's one of those things you become mechanically enamored with. You're like, ooh, this could be spicy if I board wipe and it's one sided. And you know, like standard control influences like frequent board wipes can be really great. But in a four player game, when you don't have a wincon, they're pretty bad. Yeah. I haven't played against a child of a Lara deck. I do have a board wipe deck. He's brood one. But is that Brian Stoutarm? No, it's that magenta the lion. Oh yeah. He's like that. He is he is not a cat. Magida. What did you say about his power level? It's over 8,000, which is what it says in the mangas. Very weird. He's he's a spell shaper legend. Oh yeah, spell shapers. He has two white white tap discard two cards. Destroy all creatures except for magenta the lion. Those creatures can't be regenerated. So he has wrath of God that doesn't hit him by paying for tapping it and discarding two cards. But even that, this goes back to what again, what I was saying earlier of like the goal of this deck is not actually about being a board wipe themed deck. It does that. That's stapled to the commander. That's definitely there. But it's about putting in destructive spirits of your friends when like it's about that also. And then it's about it's about being monowite reanimator deck. So I run all the reanimator stuff and I'm mostly using that spell shaping to pitch interesting stuff into my yard to then reanimate. I just happen to wipe the board. I use that board every fucking time you do it. I'm really just using it to put shape my graveyard. But hey, you know what puts stuff in graveyard's board wipes. Yeah. It actually feeds into the the goal of the deck. It does. That's what I honestly and also in my defense with that Tony, I don't think you've ever had to play against it. No, I don't even know if I've had to play against it. I don't think you have either. I think I only subject patrons to this madness. So if you sign up for selling some of my accounts like Patriot, you can have fucking show that. This is my secret plug to get someone being like, I want to play against that deck. Another opportunity to play it. That's so good. What do we think about this all reading around this one? Dude, this would make me so salty, not even just playing against this deck. Yeah. I don't really care about that part. But having the conversation would make me go crazy. I'm like, it's the combo. Are you not paying attention to what your friends are fucking telling you with their actions? Like, you got a little bit of situational awareness with this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Like, but it's like what we were saying earlier, like all cards are fine and on the table. There's a home for every salty card at different power levels. Some can't be in low power, some only belong in high power, whatever. But you got to like put a little effort into trying to make your deck palatable to the group that you're playing with. You know, you can't just subject your friends to unpleasant experiences and then complain that they're not playing against you. That's, yeah. That is madness. Let's say that you have a max 100 happy that you can be based on how a game went or how a deck performed. And you have a minimum of minus 100 that you can be grumpy or salty about how a game went, right? I'm tracking with you. If you make all of your friends minus 33.33 repeating, of course, happy. And you make yourself 100 happy. You've broken even on your your play experience in terms of happiness. You know, child of Alara, you're running the risk of making yourself 100 happy. That's great. That's good. That's the most you can do. But you've made all three of your opponents minus 100 happy. So you've made an experience that is net 200 worse than not playing. You know, so like just be aware of that. You're entitled to make people grumpy. Sometimes you're entitled to make one person extra grumpy. And the other players maybe don't matter. But if you start doing a deck that is consistently always going to imbalance and have everybody else make have only a negative experience. And you have a positive one. It's not worth it. Yeah. That ain't it. That ain't it. Well said. You guys ready for another salty story? I think I am. That's rip it. Hopefully one that doesn't talk about board wipes. I can't promise that because I haven't read it. And the title is How I Boardwiped My Pond into a living in board wiping and land destruction. Oh, it's a so this one comes to us from Gray Griffin. This is a website submission on our lovely website, howling salt mine.com or the HowlingSaltMine.com. Both are going to get you there. And on our website, we've a place where you can submit salty stories. So get them to us. Get them in the queue. You might hear it on a future episode. I say might now just because we're getting so many guys like, you know, it's a numbers game. We got a lot. Also, you might miss the episode that it's played in so you might not hear it even if we do read it. You know, so you make it. Exactly. You may be a part of the 30% you'll hear it. I might have already even read your stories. You should probably go back and listen to the catalog maybe one more time. Yeah, if you already listened, give it another go. Maybe it's in there. Yeah, rip it again. So this post is titled one last quick game before we pack up for the night. And this is a long one. So it's all buckle our belts for the mine cart and get ready for a ride. So a quicky game long ride. You guys have belts? I've just been like burying my feet in the concrete. I'm burying my feet in those grippers to just like latch onto the floor of the cart. Those grippers away. Oh, man. Yeah, I have a seat belt, dude. Yeah, I don't have one. I got to get one of those. Oh, yeah. I can see it. I'm leaning back in the cart and I can see that you don't have one. Am I in the back seat for everyone? It's actually just turned a little bit. He actually was like, you know, a blue gate to my mind. Is Tony in the back seat with me? Or is he in the front seat? Or are we on a mini band type mini cart? Okay. All right. Right. What do you want me to see? Because he's Mike's loving arms around his back. From style from photo style. Yeah. Holding the belly. Gentle caress. All right. That's another one that gets background. Let me read the post. The post. The post goes. Hello, salty boys. It's your boy, Gray Griffin, the convicted war criminal from episode 42. While my appeal works its way through the ICC. Another issue has arisen. Wow. That's an old app. Our table, as you know, often plays with more than four. Though we have not repeated, we have not repeated the two headed giant experiment. I remember this episode. Do you remember that one? The eight person to it. Yeah. Oh boy. During one of the last games of the evening, I got knocked out early. I earned it playing Kai-Kar and all. But I did end up sitting out and watching the four remaining players do get out for quite some time. By the time the game wrapped up, we had entered the twilight zone, where the next game status was in question. However, one of the players had to leave leaving us with a proper form and pod. I was eager to get in one last game. And we were all rearing to go in a proper four-way game. So we all decided one last quick one. Nice. I already see where this is going. It's always. That's when you play the three-hour game. You know, we all agreed to play decks that went fast. Nice. But apparently what this meant was lost on some players. We play at a lower power level. So we don't see a lot of turbo strategies, but there are some combo decks in the mix. I confidently pull out my chatterfing deck designed to go wide combat with access to aristocrats finishers. If getting swarmed, doesn't get the job done. The player to my left brings out Belan or Balan the cat. Belan the wanderer. Belan, yeah, Belan the wanderer. A dedicated equipment Voltron deck that has just been tuned up and is putting in some good work lately. The next player brings out Negan. He asks the Voltron player if this is okay. Since Negan is pretty brutal to Voltron. It's got so edic defects on it. With its protection piercing edic effect, I should have just kept fucking reading. Yeah. Belan agrees to play into the contested field, not having any idea of the agony that awaits him. I ask that Negan player if he really thinks that this is fastest deck, and while Negan provides powerful board control, the player in question is allergic to finishers. He assures the table that we will all rapidly die. The last player brings out a mono green Dernand deck of Stompy tramply ramp deck. This deck is notorious in our playgroup for playing constant mists and other record scratching fog effects. I ask him if he thinks he is playing one of his faster decks, and he assures me that this creature beats will progress the game. By turn four, I am practically face down on my play mat. Recasting Chatterfang will cost seven mana at this point. And Negan is playing Arch Enemy, constantly pinging down my threatening creature in Flickr effects, holding the Voltron player at bay while any meaningful creature on my or Dernan's board just eats up splash damage. It feels like everyone is hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and absolutely no threat can stick on the board. I am constantly holding up a handful of cards that will immediately eat removal the moment I put them down, but can't build a large enough board state to benefit from any of the powerful effects. Belon, similarly, can't deploy a creature that will last more than a turn, as he is continually suiting up value creature after value creature, just to accomplish anything as Belon can't make it onto the board. And anytime Dernan's board goes wide enough to threaten, he eats a board wipe. Two hours later, in the post game, after I ground out a win the hard way. I struggle to articulate. Yeah, I get it. I struggle to articulate what had gone so wrong, but it finally worked its way into my brain on the drive home. A deck may look fast to a player. It has aggressive removal, it has huge creatures, it has a big deadly commander, it has access to brutal combos, but the speed of a deck is also reflected in how others have to play around it. We could not deploy threats into the constant looming threat of Negan's removal. We could not attack into the open manner of Dernan for fear of getting fogged and destroyed on the crack back, because of how we had to play around Negan and Dernan, no one could play aggressively enough to close up the game. And to be fair, we could not let Belon settle on board and get equipped, or we would just get picked off one by one by a base of commander damage. And Chatterfang drew out at least two board wipes and had to play a long grindy game without access to all those extra squirrels. So when you want to play that one last quick game, while it's super important to be able to present a win quickly, please Negan, add a finisher, I beg you. But also to consider how quickly and decisive a deck can lose. I hope we can once again provide a historical example that the prospectors can use to steer away from. Thanks for the podcast. I was looking forward to more of that salty, salty educational content. That was a great one, great Griffin. Yeah. I'd feel like we should read Negan just because read my mind. So it's it's two are read a white in a black so two in a mardu for so five total for legendary creature human rogue. When Negan enters the battlefield, you and target opponent each secretly choose a creature that player controls. Then those choices are revealed. That player sacrifices those creatures. Whenever an opponent sacrifices a creature, you create a treasure token. So it's a little guessing game. The Negan player wants you guys to each choose a different creature. And then the other players trying to make it so that you both land on the same creature so that only one creature has to get sacrificed. So it's pretty it's pretty strong. And you can force like the Negan player gets to force a creature to be sacrificed regardless. Right? So no matter what the other player is trying to guess what Negan is going to choose. But if you just guess the best thing on your board, because you think that's what Negan's going to choose, you run the risk of Negan picking something else to try and bait you into playing it. So it is a very interesting like little diabolic choice that you have to make. But yeah, this is not going to promote a faster game. Your your your commander having an enter the battlefield potentially remove two creatures just doesn't speed stuff up. Yeah. Also just the mini game aspect of Negan coming in, people needing to choose secretly and reveal like those really game cards will always just eat up time because people need to stop and think and get out of piece of paper or like whatever to do their their guess. Yeah. So there's a lot of elements with this deck that are going to just stop the game from progressing. Yep. Anytime you desire to have a quick game, you can't say so. Putting that energy into the universe just means that the game is going to be fucking long. Yeah. So real monkey spa every fucking time we have ever been like one quick one it'll be fast like one more quick one like like fucking literally every time we do that when it's like later something. Yeah. It's like our fucking longest game that we've had in a long time like no matter what you do. So just don't don't put that energy into the universe. Either play a magic game or don't. Don't desire it to be quick because when you do it doesn't work. Case in point a few weeks ago when we were on useless knowledge is stream. We play to see each game. And you know, it was a decent length and then we were like, okay, like I think we could fit in one more, you know, before we all kind of go to bed. And that game was like three hours long. Like it was fucking ridiculous. And that's CDH. A lot of people are like, ooh CDH is so fast. Not really. Like sometimes you get in these board states where nobody can push. Everybody has some answers and you're just totally locked out and the game just gets dragged. And then you're tired and you're misplaying and like it just adds to it. There's a really interesting thing described in this story too, where OP talks about how they like need to play in a certain way. Like, well, I can't play a lot because they'll get removed by something like Jonathan. Oh, my value creatures will just eat removal. We couldn't attack aggressively because then we'll just get fogged and killed on the crack back by the Dernan player. And that's another thing that will really slow a game down. Like sometimes if you're trying to play a quick game, you need to let everyone be a little worse at the game. You just got to make some faster decisions and take some bigger risks. And like play in a fashion that is slightly less the controlled, thoughtful fashion of playing. And not everyone can do that and kind of flip into that mode. But that is another kind of key part of like trying to fit a fast game in if you're going to is like just commit to some of that stuff. See what happens. Maybe you eat the removal. Maybe they don't have it this time and you get to stick something and develop an overwhelming presence in the game. And sometimes you got to let them have it. You know, sometimes if your opponent is like, I have a counter spell in hand or I have some removal in hand, and you know it's there and you're playing your whole game around that. Sometimes it's better to just push into it and be like, all right, play the counter spell then. Play the removal of them. Like, are we all going to live in fear of this thing happening and like walk on eggshells? Or am I just going to force you to play that spell and be like, okay, we'll then counter this right now. Or save it for something later. Like you just got to jam it sometimes. Yeah, I don't even think it's sometimes. I think it's like all the time like you have to. Otherwise, you're just letting them accrue value like get more cards in their hand, which will probably do the same effect. Like you have to play into it as painful as that is. And I mean, that's like easier said than done because half the time I'll know that's right. And I'll be like, fuck you, I'm not using it for my card. Like you can do it for you. That's almost the curse of it being a multiplayer game, right? That like you want someone else to eat it. Yeah. And you're all just waiting for it. And it's just not good. Like why should I burn my creature when I can make Tony or Mike or Nick fall on the sword? You know, and of course you will have board states where you can't do that. Where, you know, there's something like a dictative airboast on board and someone's playing gava or some other thing that just has ways to constantly trigger that. And it's not worth dropping a creature. But then there are other times where your opponent just has like a single removal spell in hand. And if you don't play into it, then they're kind of effectively removing your creature already. Yeah. Like if you if you never cast the spell and they never have to cast their removal, then they have removed your creature for free already from the game. It's basically the creatures because you're not playing anything else. You're not playing anything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do we think about the salt rating on this one? It's high for me. These last games are tough. The part that really gets me is having the foresight and the social vulnerability to double check with your opponents when they select a deck to be like, are you sure, Negan? Like, okay, oh, okay, you're sure. Okay. Cool. Are you sure your turbo fog deck? Oh, you are sure. Okay. Cool. Like double checking, giving them that extra out and then them still getting it wrong. That really that makes me kind of sad. Yeah. That is definitely high salt. I mean, I think that that is just such a frustrating situation. I don't think that that would happen in our playgroup because if I was like, this next going to win really fast, you guys would be like, no, it's fucking not playing that. All right. All right. I'm sorry. I'll play a different deck. You know, but I think it's good to have I think it's good for everybody to have kind of that ungebunga go fast deck in your collection that you can bust out for those fast games. Like, for me, it's it's Roger our dent. It's Voltron. I'm just slamming equipment. I've got some fast combos in there. That is my fast game deck. Like, it is just going to rip. I don't remove many things. I don't board wipe. I just go. So having like a deck like that, like you use my decks, that's the one you want to grab for those last final quick games to truly make it a quick game because if you have multiple control decks on the table, which Negan and TurboFog are forms of control, you know, multiple edix and stopping combat. That is a type of control here. That's just going to slow the game. That is not turbos, not going fast. For sure. Well, yeah. Samuel. Mm-hmm. Is it that time of the fucking week? Oh, Tony, I think it is that time of the week. Hell yeah. Well, lay it on me. What time is it? It's the time of the week that comes every week. Every fucking week. It's the time of the week where we say Mike. Mike. Mike. Yes. What's the salty card of the week? The salty card of the week. This week is at Stormaul. But it's the season of the stacks in there Who will love law? I can only cast one spell in now Spread my salt 'cause I just like to play the victim and it's all your fault 'cause you wouldn't let me win and I'll Dream each night of some game against you And I'll cast my spells and I will not lose Now you're paying stacks and some bullshit too Next time I'll tap blue and I will counter you That was great. That was great Nice And that's a stick season by Noah Cullen, I think is how you pronounce the last name. Just Cahn. Cahn. Cahn. Noah Cahn. That was requested by a patron, Serotonous Sequoia, so thanks Sequoia for that one. Hell yeah. Had a lot of fun singing that song and writing it today. I listened to that song like 10 times and was just like As soon as I got I'll storm off but it's the season of the stacks. I was like, oh it's fucking it dude. It felt like a bop. I feel like the kind of song I personally would want to listen to. Oh it's a good song. It's great song dude. I was definitely on it. I forgot. I forgot clips of it. Just on like social media and never sat down and listen to it and it's a banger. Well thank you for that lovely salty song Sam. I don't know. I'm Mike. The salty card of the week this week is energy flux. Oh dude. I love this guy. It sounds like blue bullshit. Wow. That's only my guess. Got it right. Tony got it right. It's a blue enchantment. It's two in a blue for enchantment. All artifacts have at the beginning of your upkeep sacrifice this artifact Unless you pay to. Yup. Yup. So it's like an extra mean version of whatever that white hate bear is. It's tabernacle of pendrel veil but instead of one man for creatures it's two man of our artifacts. Yep. So Tony how do you feel about this one? I think it's situational but every deck has artifacts. There's so few that don't. And the only ones that you would like keep depending on the situation even is probably the ones that are tapping for more than one man us because you're like well it'll pay for itself and eventually hopefully it'll be gone. I have a few decks that like don't really run them in your artifacts or maybe like just a couple of rocks or whatever and I'd be like whatever. But in general everybody's usually got I'd argue somewhere between two and five probably on average like in the middle of an hour. I'm out like somewhere around there and like yeah I'm gonna be like fuck you stupid blue player like me me do shit like this fucking is there anything that blue doesn't fucking do that I know is like everybody like like why? Why does blue get so many different fucking random ways to annoy people like this is just another one of those. Fuck blue. Yes it is a trash color for trash fucking people. There it is folks. How do you feel about this one Sam? I love this card. This card is a very sentimental place for me because I found it really early in my magic career and was just fascinated by the fact that it would just fuck over artifacts. And this is back when I was playing like stupid magic and you know just like kitchen table bullshit and my roommate had a mere deck that was all artifacts energies and I did not have any artifacts in my deck. So of course I put this into a deck and you know what I won those games when it came out it was very very good like Tony said to some decks it's going to be so punishing to a lot of decks it's like okay well I'm going to lose my soul ring or I'm going to lose my fell or stone or arcane signal or whatever. I think it gets really devious with tokens with artifact tokens like clues or food or whatever you're on or if you're making like artifact creature tokens right or tokens do yeah like treasures are a great example because tokens are one of those things where you're not going to pay to keep them around. Like you know you'll pay to keep like a big value artifact around you're not going to pay to keep food tokens around but your deck probably needs food tokens to run if you're on like a big food plan. So this type of thing just completely hoses you because there's no world where you're going to pay the 10 mana to keep all your food tokens around or whatever it is so I dig it I think it's really cool tech I think it could be situation really into against the right deck kind of salty again it's like really really match up dependent I think if somebody dropped this against me with my to go casket deck I'd be pretty salty about that but not if you had Mary netmaster yeah that's also true like you're also kind of turning on my ability. To sack artifacts and burn people for you. Yeah for about you if you could like fucking you'll just lash it in real quick yeah but it's an interesting card I think it's cool how do you feel about this one Mike I like it I mean I think one of the things that keeps this in check a little bit in the format is that blue often needs rocks the most in order to ramp like they have very few other options whereas you know green can green and white actually even can both do some land ramp pretty decently well black and red can do rituals and stuff but blue kind of only has rocks to ramp so you you have a hard time running it in mono blue deck in other decks it can be pretty painful I think like if you're in a lot of the same thing you're just doing a bunch of land ramp BS and then you drop an energy flux and everyone else loses their rocks like that can be pretty back breaking I think one of my favorite things about this is the art with car in it car just looks like the like me coming to tell my mom I threw up I threw up like in the kid in the doorway meme of like I love the flavor text on that one too it says that nothing he just grasped the power stone and squeezed tightly the wild flashing ceased like yeah cars on like a drug trip or something yeah got to squeeze the power stone where on the list is is this Mike what do you like to know Tony I'm good I mean that's why he asked why don't you take some guesses I got it locked into my mind hmm I'm locked in I'm locked in I got it all right what do we got 138 I said 223 Sam takes it yeah it is 266 damage okay whatever blues still fucking stupid I almost did 244 but I I pushed it up at the last set yeah that makes sense to me I feel like no one's really playing this because of the reasons we set you know you probably have like five to ten artifacts in any of your decks so this is kind of like a build around card but even when it lands like maybe you hose your opponents maybe you don't and the opponents that you fuck over are probably just going to target you for the rest of the game until this thing gets removed so it's not really giving you so much advantage that I think you want to play it but like I said I do think it could be situationally brilliant what's the most common commander that place this mic you guys want to take a guess some fucking bullshit monoblue thing we just spoke about the difficulty of running this in mono blue I I truly have no guess it's sure the enchanter sure oh that's pretty good right out just to them right up with sir and then following that there's to Vasa estrid and Tatsunari the like sultai frog guy yeah those are usually big enchantress builds so I was kind of thinking like oddly enough I think this would fit in that estrid land fuck over deck yeah yeah as a nice little compliment to the land destruction that you're doing exactly that's cool man that's a cool card well thanks for thanks for plan that's it for the salty card of the week thanks for the salty card mic it was a lovely salty card and thank you to all the folks for tuning into another episode of the Howling salt mine podcast you know we got a shout out our salt packet plus to your members in this week we have thought to miss prime Rothbox sire speedy bobo fat Brandon mouse cop chameleon remstone captain cross clearbrook dbson gilgamesh dugs dad bark bark magic little throws eebs jse evolved kylok has swankub bark and ill go fogal thanks for sporting us we really really appreciate that hope you guys are all loving the custom tokens that were sending out as well and think it's all the other prospectors out there for tuning into another episode of the Howling salt mine podcast and if you want more howling salt mine check out our patreon patreon dot com slash howling salt mine you can get into our discord hang out with us we're talking about spoilers every day we've got like a debate section we've got a musically going on right now with a bunch of people sharing our bling talking about our deck lists brewing together it's just an awesome community and if you want to be a part of the howling salt mine community and really get in there and chat with other prospectors and make some friends the discord is the place to be as you go up in those tears you can get our bonus content that we have which I mentioned on a previous episode is a pre sizeable amount of bonus content at this point we've got a huge backlog of our extra salt episodes which are once a month full episodes we put out in so many stray grains that you can just you up and binge all in a row and get all those crazy little bits that don't make it into the final cut of the show we also have a monthly token club and we'll send you tokens at those higher tiers so check it out it's a really good time we put a lot of work into it and we really really love our patreon and our patreon community that has formed another way that you can help support the show is to check out our merchandise we should have dragon shields leaves coming back soon. So sorry for the delay on that, you know, sometimes these things move a little bit slowly, but those are coming back to us pretty soon. So keep an ear out. We'll be talking about that once we get them back in stock. We also have our amazing play mats over on Jank mats. So check that stuff out. And then of course our bonfire store where you can get a bunch of different shirts that we have. We just added tank tops to all the different bonfire options for the summertime. So if that's something that interests you, hop on that and flex those pythons and a nice, howling salt mine shirt. Another way that you can support the show is to give us a five serve view and your favorite podcast app of choice, whether that is Spotify, Apple podcasts, what have you, wherever you're at, that is going to help us stick out in the algorithm, help our show look more successful to the algorithm. And then they will suggest it to new people and organically get new listeners. It's actually how we get the vast majority of our listeners these days. Howling salt mine doesn't do any advertisement. We don't do anything like that. It's all word of mouth and suggestions through really the Spotify and Apple podcast apps. So if you've already done that, thank you so much for helping us grow the show. We really, really appreciate that. And lastly, you know we got a shout out amount. Our amazing friend, Devon Burnett, for gifting us our beautiful podcast art that we rock every single week. If you're ever in Asheville, North Carolina, hit up Devon and get a tattoo. He's a really awesome guy. And that is a subscriber's our best indeed. Well, thanks again everybody. And as always, stay salty and don't forget to draw an additional card during your draw step. It was like 80 today. Yeah, it was 80 today. Fucking sucked, dude. Now it's just like blazing on. It sucked. I've had a bunch of lunch beers and that just dried me out, man. Oh, yeah, that'll tuck her out. Mm-hmm. Big EP time over here. EP newser. Certified EP snoozer. Why shouldn't I? After all, I shouldn't die. Why shouldn't I? But yeah, hell yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, nice one, Mr. Guy. Whoops. What just happened? Did I miss something? Maybe I definitely thought my mic was muted. Tony's mic is a lot better than it used to be. Yeah, it's live. And his, it's live as fuck. What? His butt did a thing. Dude, did I miss a fart? Oh, well, if you're in, well, you'll hear it as many times as you want. Hell yeah. I'm gonna make that my ringtone, dude. I'm making that my ring back tone. So when people call me, it really is kind of a literal ringtone because tone was ringing his cheeks with a gust of wind from his ass. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's more of a tone ring, right? All right, let's get into the episode. Sorry. We need to know the tone ring. Really, Tony's ring was. Yeah. Yep. At least there's no visual, you know, that's the real one. There was. There was. That's recorded, too. Yeah, you did. Spread your cheeks right on the mic, which was wild. That was a crazy number. You did do that. That was a weird call. That's a fucking crazy move. If I'll write in the moment though. Like Sam wasn't here, but I was still here. So it was. Yeah, yeah. You're like, I found my mic was muted and my camera was off. I do this all the time. It is hot, so I'm not a, I'm not wearing pants. So you guys know? Yeah. All right, we got to start. We have an hour and nine minutes. We can't dilly dally right now. Yeah, we cannot.