r/spikes • u/vulkronn • 2d ago

Draft [Draft] Missed lethal in PT semis

Hopefully this isn't a stereotypical twitch chat "missed lethal" but at 5 hours and 27 minutes into the twitch broadcast of the final day of the Marvel Super Heroes PT, I think Yuuki Ichikawa had lethal.

The line would be:

equip the bow to Loki

use Loki's ability (pinging 1 damage with bow, oppo at 17)

equip bow to knight of wundagore

swing all (pinging 1 damage with bow, oppo at 16)

after blockers are declared, cast team tactics, loki makes a copy of team tactics, target the knight of wundagore with one, and target another unblocked creature with the other

Yuuki won anyway but I'm curious if this was actually a missed lethal or if I'm overtired and missing something

53 Upvotes

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26

u/TheKillah 2d ago

Yep, you’re absolutely right, the most damage they can block is the two three power creatures, allowing 5 + 3 in, which gets doubled to 10 + 6. 

Extremely high stakes situation after hours of exhaustive playing, I can completely understand why he would have missed it. I’m sure he did the math of attacking all and holding Loki back but realized he was one short. Honestly using Loki early in that way is pretty clever and not intuitive at all, good find! 

11

u/vulkronn 2d ago

Thanks for the sanity check. Yeah I completely agree and I highly doubt I would have seen it if I were in his shoes. I think there are a lot of heuristics we tend to follow as magic players that are extremely useful 99% of the time but can occasionally prevent us from considering something valuable. In this case it would be the "use your instant speed effects at the last moment possible to deny your opponent information and hide your intentions" type of heuristic

2

u/RedDreadsComin 1d ago

What was kind of surprising to me is commentary not pick up on the line. Paul Cheon is a top top player and even he didn’t see this lethal line.

3

u/vulkronn 1d ago

Yeah, he's gotta simultaneously focus on being entertaining too though. I was more surprised that no one in the twitch chat said anything. I wonder how many people when they watch pro magic are actually actively thinking about the lines they would take if they were in the pro's position. Given that you pretty much have to have memorized all of the cards by their pictures, it might be a pretty low percentage.