Dunkum

Have to go Ferruchemist w/ allomantic gold or nicrosil, depending on what precisely nicrosil investiture does and how it could be used in concert with other ferruchemical abilities. basically the only allomantic abilities that I think are worth having would be steel, iron, pewter, or tin, and maybe bendalloy or cadmium, but each of these is overridden by the compounding potential of Gold and (maybe) nicrosil. beyond that, Feruchemical pewter and Feruchemical tin, though slightly different from their allomantic counterparts, accomplish most of the same things. plus you dont burn through you metals with ferruchemy, so you would only have to replace the allomantic one (expensive, in my case, but compounding draws the usefulness out a bit). basically, I could store strength at work with no problem. just storing a couple percent 8 hours a day 5 days a week would presumably build up. likewise speed and some senses (dont really need taste or smell most of the day). I know a couple really good all you can eat type places that would let me make use of bendalloy and get my money's worth, etc. etc. day to day, it is easy to find times when you could siphon away a bit of most metals, and even the harder ones could be dealt with on a lazy sunday afternoon on occasion.

I'll go to bat for them. I maintain that Eye of the World and The Great Hunt are the worst and second worst in the series respectively (The Dragon Reborn, conversely, is maybe the best). it gets a bit dicey again around book 7 or 8 (paranoid emo Rand is unbearable) then picks up again around 11 or 12 for the finish. but I have honestly never understood the opinion (that I've heard from a coupel people) that says Crossroads of Twilight is the worst. it just isn't that bad.

and don't forget that there is no soil anywhere except Shinovar (that we are aware of). I don't know how much food the rockbuds and such can provide, but I would bet that it is probably relatively small compared to the more fertile areas on Earth, all of which would probably slow down technological process. also, don't forget that even today there is still the occasional Amazon tribe that apparently hasn't had any contact with modernity, so it isn't like it is a given that after 5000 years everyone will have our level of technology. even here that hasn't happened.

have to second the idea of just using a motorcycle helmet. they could do some hand waving about it being reinforced and what not, and it would be fine. definitely look better that what they went with (and the magneto resemblance is really distracting)

As a rule, for investiture and shard related things, I tend to assume the "passing relationship with physical laws" idea. when things don't behave how they normally would in the physical realm, I tend to assume it is because there is something else going on in the spiritual or cognitive.

Not a Redditor, so have to pass on that one. based on what you are saying, though, I would guess that if the power is consumed to sustain Nightblood, Odium's power would be dispersed (like Ruin's was, more or less) and presumably eventually condense back into the shard. or the infusion of power would destroy nightblood's physical form, removing the need to constantly ingest more investiture. or maybe something in between.

This actually reminds me of another possibility that had occurred to me: I was more or less of the impression that the investiture that Nightblood absorbs is more or less being used up to sustain nightblood's existence. basically that it is so out of touch with normality, that it requires this energy source in order to remain 'alive'. not entirely unlike a returned feeding on breaths. based on that, I'm curious what would happen if it absorbed an entire shard. what is the possibility that it could more or less actually remove odium from existence entirely? doesn't seem likely, but possible?

Does Nightblood actually need to understand hatred in order to be influenced by it? wouldn't it be possible that the power of a Shard, as well as the influence of Odium's intent would cause it to attempt to vigorously carry out it's original "slay evil" command? basically, it seems like the interaction between the command, and Odium's intent would result in Nightblood hating evil, whether or not it truely understood either hatred or evil. as to whether or not it could understand concepts like evil or hatred: I'm inclined to say it would, though I would be a lot more confident in that if we knew whether using extra breaths (2000 instead of 1000 say) would have increased nightblood's capacity for understanding. the difference between 1000 breaths and an entire shard seems like it should be enormous: orders of magnitude. the difference between a stick of dynamite and the sun. if 1000 breaths can provide basic sentience, it seems like something on the order of a shard could drastically expand on that. moreover, to the point about others who have taken up a shard: it is possible that the relationship is not linear. if it is logarithmic, then beyond a certain point, the enhancement to conciousness would tend to almost plateau. for someone like Sazed, there would be a change, but not necessarily a huge one, but for nightblood, it could be much more dramatic. at any rate, I like the theory. I don't know that I think it will happen, or even how plausible it actually is, but I like it.

there are some backstory/mythology parts of it that are decent, as i recall.

ah, I was missing that final connection of the annihilator/return to play under your control effects wen there are so few other permanents in play for them to sac. the main problem is that in an EDH setting, your chances of gettign any of those cards is lower, especially since none is a legendary creature, and so cant be the commander. I guess as long as the individual cards still work within the grand scheme of the deck, it's all good; and Gideon and It That Betrays are pretty good on their own (though i still hate all eldrazi, and probably wouldn't play one). that said, I'll just stick with my Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind/Curiosity combo.

I want to second (or i guess third at this point) Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel is also amazing. one caveat: it takes place during the napoleanic wars in England, but with magical elements, so if you are looking for high fantasy ala tolkein, this isn't that. Dianna Wynne Jones, from what little I remember of hers, was pretty good as well, though maybe not quite to the level of the other two. other than those three, I am having trouble remembering any female authors I may have read. there probably were some, but I don't recall offhand.

Glad I wasn't the only one missing the connection there. at a guess, all those cards seem reasonably good at removing your opponents' defenses (and the detention sphere could be used to reserve a permanent against gideon's -15 ability, which seems pretty useful) beyond that, I don't see much.

this probably requires several advanced degrees in psychology to even begin to answer...

just a couple of quick gatherer searches: w=white, u=blue, b=black, r=red, g=green, a=artifact, l=land for entering: cathar's crusade (w), anything with evolve (generally u, g, or ug), cream of the crop (g), death match (b ), impact tremors (r ), mana echoes (r ), valor in akros (w) for leaving ( i could only find for the creature dying, but that works for this, i think) black market (b ), blade of the bloodchief (a), fecundity (g), lifeline (a), liliana, defiant necromancer (b ), lumberknot (g), thornbite staff (a), vicious shadows (r ) and that is just skimming off the top from a couple of simple searches: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[%22whenever%20a%20creature%20dies%22] http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[%22whenever%20a%20creature%20enters%20the%20battlefield%22] any slight variation on the triggering clause ("whenever another creature" instead of "whenever a creature" e.g.) would yield different results. edit: in fact, here is a larger search, incorporating most variations I could think of offhand, at least some of these should be good: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=|[%22whenever%20another%20creature%20dies%22]|[%22whener%20a%20creature%20you%20control%20dies%22]|[%22whenever%20another%20creature%20you%20control%20dies%22]|[%22whenever%20a%20creature%20dies%22]|[%22whenever%20a%20creature%20enters%20the%20battlefield%22]|[%22whenever%20another%20creature%20enters%20the%20battlefield%22]

I think we agree on primeval bounty's usefulness: it is good, but not good enough to build a deck around. For Evolutionary leap, it would work in concert with enter and leave the battlefield effects, but that, again, is the card working to combo with others, not workign on its own strength. that said, such a deck could be interesting, especially with some graveyard interaction. something like Mortivore, where each sacrifice increases his power, or as you mention, reassembling skeleton where you can return it each turn would help a lot. kresh too, for that matter (though my friend has found what might be the best combo with kresh: phyrexian dreadnought). you could combo it w primeval bounty, but that just seems inefficient.

aren't there some around the giant sea creature she studies in WoR?

if it was a surgebinder, maybe. otherwise it would get torn to shreds. on the other hand, if it survived long enough, it wold probably just get dropped by the weakened storm in Shinovar. that's probably where all their soil comes from: fish that have fallen in a highstorm

Evolutionary Leap isn't really a card I like a whole lot. there is no guarantee that the creature you are sacrificing will net you a better creature than the one you lost, this is especially true if you are sacrificing a 3/3. unless you get some benefit out of the sacrifice itself (and there are definitely black cards that could make that happen), i think it is a bit too much of a gamble. I hadn't seen the term "Win-more" before, but it is definitely spot on for primeval bounty. in a pinch, there are most likely going to be better things you can do (not every time, but mostly), but if you are already in good shape, it can help keep you there. extrapolating a bit from wyrmhero's post: green creature heavy EDH/commander deck seems a more or less ideal situation for it. you have the time to build up the mana for it, and usually the time to use its abilities some. if you mixed in some +1/+1 counter manipulation/interaction then you would benefit from the secondary ability as well. but at this point you are basically building a deck around it, and it isn't strong enough to warrant that. so basically I would say take a second and consider if any of the above sounds like a deck you would want to/ be able to build without primeval bounty, and then maybe think about adding it in if you do build one.

Good to know. I only recently got it working on Windows 8.1, and wasn't sure about going through with the windows 10 upgrade. think I'll hold off now, wait to see if this is a big problem and if it gets fixed.

well 6 mana is a bit expensive, though if any color could manage that cost it would be green. I could see it working in a deck that already has a +1/+1 counter focus, like one based around evolve or modular; this is especially true if you have creatures or spells that can use those +1/+1 counters like a fathom mage or simic manipulator. comboing it with any "whenever a creature enters the battlefield" or "whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control" type abilities also seems like it could work, but would likely be even more expensive. it also seems like it would combo well with Life and Limb in a saproling token deck. and of course +1/+1 counters and 3/3 tokens seem like a good combination in a trample deck.

not 100% sure you can spike something that is already dead...my gut says that wouldn't work

The alternative answer to both of those is that the soulcasting would, in some way, release the investiture which would probably flow back to its shard or something. alternatively, since investiture has a gaseous form, it could just dissipate like a gas would.

guess we'll have to wait and see what the rest of the set holds. as it stands, though, ingest is looking pretty weak. better than nothing, but not really worth paying extra mana for or anything

my old computer dies, and the default windows 8 background (havent been able to upgrade to 10 yet) for me was "String Lake - Grand Tetons" which is pretty good, so I have stuck with that.

I'm not even seeing it as combo potential, really. unless there are a lot of cards with "whenever a card is put into your graveyard (from you library, from anywhere)" type effects. maybe if there is some extra library interaction, a lot of "search your library for x" type stuff, then ingest serves as a slight counter to that. or maybe opponent graveyard interaction (mortivore, teneb the harvester, etc). you an find cards with the sorts of abilities that would make it useful, but I wouldn't really qualify it as having combo potential unless they actually print some more of those cards in the set.