As an official representative for Team Rocket, I can confirm that we had nothing to do with this.

Counter-counterpoint: Pro basketball and football games, or even championships, can be won on a last-second prayer of a throw. Sure, some skill is involved, just like an amount of skill is involved to survive in Hearthstone for this long, but sometimes, one team gets lucky at the end and wins. It’s not a perfect…

I can do you one better, literally. There are two graveyards near my house, and both of them have gyms.

I doubt it. It’s a small-ish town, so the government is all old farts.

It’s not so bad in my town. There’s only one pokestop at a bar, and the gym downtown is at city hall, so we really can’t get into too much trouble.

Dredge is still king of “you think you’ve learned how this game is played, don’t you?” Red may win quickly, but Dredge, even Vintage Dredge, is hella cheap and basically doesn’t play the same game as you.

Of the two gyms in cemeteries near my house, I have found exactly 0 Ghost-types. Pokemon Go plz.

I can dream, Harold!

He’s going to be one of those people that rolls up to Vintage tournaments with a no-proxy deck (total value: easily 6 figures, 7 figures if you have the pricey versions of cards) and get absolutely destroyed by Dredge (4 figures). Can’t wait for him to realize that even in a card game, money only usually buys power.

Depending on how you look at the numbers, Wade was either perfectly fine while with the Heat, or amazingly selfless. He either: still made $10 million per year or more, or took around a 30% pay cut. If you VOLUNTEERED for a 30% pay cut, you’d want a crazy payday later.

I appreciate when the GPS goofs up, sends you across the town, and then you suddenly get a Drowzee. Gotta get the ghosts and psychics for the two gyms near my house at the two cemeteries that someone has somehow already set up shop in. Grr.

It’s really unfortunate that the game isn’t out yet, plus I didn’t get to trade in my phone for one with a better battery life. So since I didn’t get that trade-in gift card, I have not been past Go, and I did not collect my $200. In jail confirmed.

It could be possible, but it’d be crazy hard to balance. What I expect would happen is something like Shards of Alara Standard in Magic, where there was one Best Deck (Jund), and two other decks (Vampires and Control) that created a Triangle of Mutual Destruction, not unlike Rock Paper Scissors. Jund beats Vampires…

Yeah, the cost of living for tutoring has kinda doubled.

You’d think so, but ever since Demonic Tutor was determined to be really, really, way too good, searching for cards has generally become too expensive. Combo decks will utilize search because they need it, and they also tend to combo out with lots of temporary mana, negating the cost disadvantage. Control decks will…

Whoa, hold on there, buster. Sounds like you need to look up Dredge, aka Playing Magic Correctly Is For Losers.

I counter that it has a perfect place in a tourney deck. It’s a silver bullet, a Get Out of Jail Free card. Take a 30-card deck that’s already viable with a fair number of spells, take one card out, and put in Yogg. Don’t play it unless you’re getting rekt. In a tourney, you’d never play it if you’re winning, and…

Combo decks are built that way, yes, but aggro or mid-range decks (Hearthstone: Zoolock, Evolve Shaman, etc. MtG: Red Deck Wins, Death and Taxes, etc.) rely instead on appropriate mana curves and all around good cards, so that the randomness of their own deck does not affect their play as much. Sligh is the first…

That’s probably why RNG effects on cards are lessened in MtG. Mana systems have not really been 100% solved. Hearthstone’s system is more consistent than Magic’s, but it’s not perfect. Also, screw Energy.

All CCGs suffer from an amount of luck. No matter how skilled the players are, if you draw like ass, you can’t play better than ass. Yogg-Saron increases the luck factor, but without him, there’s still a decent degree of randomness inherent in the system.