Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang)

Black nerd, bi guy, work in tech as a project manager. Passionate about politics, intersectionality, Magic the Gathering, DC Comics, Black culture and more.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@GavinVerhey I'm not surprised but still extremely thrilled to hear you voted for Harris too! I'm anxious but cautiously optimistic about our chances.

I hope all is well BTW Gavin!

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@sean93pq @talkofthecharts @Beyonce Why not both?

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@TolarianCollege @SaffronOlive Players loudly whined and complained about the old system, specifically that shipping took too long which is much faster with the new system.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@worldsfinest I'm in the process of a Young Justice rewatch with a friend and I recently saw this episode again, it's fantastic, a great arc with lots of interesting twists and turns!

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@jasonkilanski @iamcardib What evidence do you have that Beyonce got paid to endorse Harris?

She's a billionaire. She doesn't need to get paid to endorse Harris.

Cardi B said she didn't want to vote for Biden or Trump but she liked Harris and was inspired when she ran for president. She wasn't paid.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@jasonkilanski @iamcardib "Beyonce got $10M."

You just made that up.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@SaffronOlive I know you are already brewing the Standard Maze of End deck and I can't wait to watch you play it in an upcoming video hopefully!

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@FVLAM That would be so hype!

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@MTGGoldfish This seems pretty good. This is basically Mutavault the sequel. I suspect this will see some Standard play for sure, right?

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen Wow, that's and interesting fun fact!

Please do the same but for a 4-color design (but something more dynamic than creature typal)! 😛

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen I think that game designers appealing to populism sometimes (provided it doesn't break the game) is typically a good thing.

Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful was a good example of a design that did this (and again, I'm saying this as a person who on principal really dislikes Partner).

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen That makes sense.

I will note, even though I don't like 2 color partners, they are ridiculously popular by the player base.

Although in my humble opinion 2 color partners (and even mono colored ones) are significantly more developmentally problematic than 4 color cards.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@Real_Kilometers @coreyjbowen I think that's largely true if you choose to play maximum sweaty/optimal.

Additionally, I wonder if the variance among how people would build those types of decks would be increased if there was a higher variance of 4 color commanders (which there are very very few of currently)

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen The fact that you can play Treasure Cruise in a Vial Smasher deck is absurd to me. I don't see how that is different than playing Thassa Deep-Dwelling in a Elesh Norn, Mother of the Machine deck.

It leads to a bunch of soup decks also because the Partners are broad designs. 2/2

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen What is your take on the Partner mechanic?

My hot take is Partner is problematic because it violates one of the most important rules of EDH in that it allows you to play cards outside of the color identity of a commander to support it with positive synergy lines. 1/2

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen It's not that I can't make a WBRG blink/panharmonicon deck, it's that it's boring that I literally only have one option for who can be my commander.

FWIW, I meant to say UBRG deck (more colors with primary flicker/ETB shenanigans) but I think you understand my point.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@Real_Kilometers @coreyjbowen I don't think a mono B reanimator deck has to reach far for effects. There are more than enough reanimation spells, there are several big creatures to reanimate + many ways to self discard/self mill.

But those decks are going to be less varied than the 4-color reanimation decks

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen And what you are saying makes sense (obviously of course, that's you're job + you're an adept professional Magic designer!)

But respectfully + humbly, I think there's plenty of homogenization in EDH at higher power tables for some commanders among irrespective of color identity.

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen I don't want homogenization with 4+ color legends.

I just want it so that instead of 4 color commanders being less than half of 1% of all the commanders printed in the past 4 years, they would be more like 2-3% of the total.

BTW, I sincerely appreciate the in-depth response.🙏🏿

[Honor Basquiat (Marcus Lang) @marcusjlang]

@coreyjbowen Sometimes I want to build an broad archetype I enjoy but I don't want to do it the way it is always done + having more colors gives me more options.

Blink is my favorite archetype and I'd love to make a WBRG Blink deck but there's literally only 1 commander with that color ID.