@Spiderman: How wise was it to make this the featured thread and then come in here and start yakking about the Ferret's absence and all? We demand more discussion of Eternal Witness! Less discussion of Sims online! Demand, demand!
@Duke: If it's any consolation, which it won't be, I said what I said simply to cheese you off. Think carefully about how much of what I said actually made sense, ("The 90's called and they want their fear of change back?" What does that even mean?), and also observe the careful placement of smilies, (If you look hard enough, you'll notice that they both appear right after my two faux-insults). Come now, I told you to learn how to play better right after you had just yelled at everyone for telling you to build a better deck. Did you really think I was serious? I was teasing you. It was a joke. I was winding you up and waiting for your oh-so-predictable defense-babble to spill all over the place. People on this forum have been doing it to you for some time, (Remember when train asked you if your screen name referred to John "The Duke" Wayne?). You take the bait just about every time. You're way too easy of a target, and until you learn to lighten up, I'm going to keep punishing you by jerking your chain.
Just remember, you are the one the one responsible for your own feelings. If a magic card or a post on a message board upsets you, that's your decision, not mine.
But, if you want to actually argue with me, let's review your posts:
You last post to me said many things, but the most important strand was this:
Duke said:
What I hate is playing against players who play different decks but again and again having to face the same wash, rinse, and repeat strategy using the same one card.
This, of course, is a perfectly reasonable sentiment. In this post you criticized me for not reading what you had said, and assured me that you were not angry at Eternal Witness because it was powerful and beating you all the time but because you were sick of seeing people use it uncreatively. Fine.
However, if you are truly interested in being "fair enough" consider the language of every one of your posts before that one.
Duke said:
... In other words, totally out of control. I have played against decks that would totally sieze to function should this card be removed from their grasp. ... The card is slightly overpowered. And I hate it. ...
Duke said:
... the card is too powerful for my tastes. ... What's even more lazy is not being able to work a rusting brain long enough to understand the difference between hating a card because someone lost their dignity to it, and hating a card because it is essentially rather powerful, even on its own. ...
Duke said:
... when I walked away from such battles, whether I had lost or won, I usually just shake it off because the opposing decks usually had beat me using plenty of cards, not 2 or 3 cards, such as the case of the Witness. ...
Duke said:
... Sure it's not pretty being beaten by Raffinity, for example, but I think a lot of its cards are so easy to deal with its not even funny. I've faced many powerful cards. But having played the environment for about 2 months, I can safely say that even now, Eternal Witness is an underrated card, and its power is rather obvious and even arrogant. ...
Now, if your anayltical skills are really as keen as you seem to think they are, you will have to agree that these statements imply the following things:
1) You think EW is really powerful, perhaps even too powerful.
2) You hate Eternal Witness because it is powerful. (Not, as you would claim later, because it was being used uncreatively)
3) The fact that there are many decks who's success hinges on this one card bothers you.
4) You don't mind losing to an arsenal of weapons, such as those seen in Affinity decks, but you really hate to lose to a small core of cards, especially when Eternal Witness is one of those cards.
To your credit, you did also have a few moments where your hatred of "uncreativity" shined through. Still, before I showed up you had made no effort whatsoever to explain your hatred of EW beyond, "it's powerful." I can make two logical deductions from this.
1) You are full of it. As soon as somebody criticizes you, you backpeddle and change your story.
OR
2) You have very poor communication skills.
I'm inclined not to think of you as dinhonest, so deduction 1 is right out. Therefore I think it is reasonable to suggest to you that you are very bad at explaining yourself to people. For all of your long-winded intelli-babble, you are remarkably bad at expressing your point of view in a way that makes sense to most of us.
I see now that you have disdain for EW because many people are using it as a crutch. Because you find yourself facing many decks, but one card. Because for all the creative things one could be doing with a deck of magic cards, most of your opponents are unable to escape the black hole of creativity that is Eternal Witness - Everyting from Kiki-Jiki to Astral Slide to Crystal Shard to Evacuation to Ninjas can find itself heavily leaning on the Witness. If this is how you feel, fine, but you really should have said as much in your first post.
And if I'm
still wrong about what you are saying, fine, but I challenge you to explain what exactly about Eternal Witness you find so troublesome and what exactly you don't.
And in plain English this time!
It's a little uncivil for you to say one thing, mean another, and then insult all of our intelligences when we misunderstand you. I hope one day you will grow up and realize that if you are to enjoy your stay amongst us lower humans, you must learn the value of good communication. It is a tool for expressing ideas, not a tool for wagging your e-penis.
Now, if you would like to return to actual debate over the card, I think it would do you well to reconsider what I said earlier:
rooser said:
I think the fact that it is a creature is the very reason it somehow seems wrong to you to find it in every other decklist. Are you bothered by the proliferation of efficient burns spells or cost-effective cantrips or the black removal du jour? Probably not. But a creature with similar flexibilty? OH NOS!!!1!~!
Your complaint against the card seems to hinge on the fact that it can fit into any deck with green. A valid complaint if you are making it. This is the same logic that keeps Ancestral Recall on the restricted list. If it were unrestricted and common, it would be an automatic four-of in any deck that could splash blue. And Eternal Witness is indeed a card with a similar and undisputed advantage attached to it. (Ironically, this line of argument does circle back to "I hate the card because it is powerful, durf durf.")
My question, which ye-of-excellent-reading-skills seem to have missed somehow was "Why does this particular versatile card bother you so much when others don't?" And keep in mind that this is an actual question. I'm not saying to myself "Hah hah, I've got him know! This will surely stump him!" but rather "Gee, I really honestly wonder why Duke hates this versatile card over other versatile cards. I really hope he gives me a concise, flame-free answer."