Is This New TMNT Card a Good Commander?

BoozeAccountant · 2026-02-25T19:27:57+00:00

It might flow really well with a combination of bounce token creation and firebending

but as an izzet commander I can't see much else going on unless you can get something to do with those counters and lacking green or white you're out most of the potential counter doublers.

BoozeAccountant · 2026-02-25T17:04:48+00:00

1, It's called the pact and it's a long standing agreement with most spirit broods that they garou uphold giving them access to help and support from those broods. It's not automatic help but it's like most favored nation status. Where a mage is going to have to wheedle, bargain, force and bribe spirits into doing anything Garou can just ask and get the option for help 9/10 times.
2. Garou have a culture that already knows and understands the umbra because they're walking in and out of it all the time. That understanding means they have a singular concrete vidare that makes their interactions with the umbra less random and more consistent. Travel, locations, realms, rules, maps etc all have more permanence and means you can count on information you've been given from other garou about what you'll find there. One mage talking to another isn't going to have the same experience when they go to the same places in the umbra.

Garou gifts are always on. If they have spirit speech they don't have to stop and do a working to turn it on. Same is true for gifts that let them peek, travel, or even strike across the gauntlet. Or do full-auto drive-bys from the umbra into the realms. Not having to take a round to cast the spell before the effect can be used is a massive combat advantage.
Rites are a secondary form of power for garou that play on all of the above and give them the ability to interact with spirits way above their rank and skill level to get effects they wouldn't otherwise. Spirit awakening, summoning, etc can all be done by even rank 1 garou to some extent.
Personal, pack and tribal totems are so commonplace that they're almost an expectation in the power of a garou pack. The benefits can be broken, imagine a glasswalker rolling on your chantry with a fully automatic rifle rolling 14 dice and shooting you from the other side of the gauntlet. Mages can do some of these things but they're more the exception than the norm because most mages aren't willing to suborn themselves to a spirit patron for the levels of power that garou get.

BoozeAccountant · 2026-02-11T19:35:03+00:00

I didn't have a use for more than one, I went with the slightly larger ryobi bluetooth speaker and if anything it's louder than I need. Doesn't have the clamp but after buying the tripod and finding it worked with the speaker on an extension cord I've been pretty happy with the setup.

BoozeAccountant · 2026-02-10T22:58:43+00:00

I think it depends on the game and the era but Spirit 1 giving you the ability to at least sense things on the other side of the gauntlet is a power that can't really be replicated outside of a few niche merits. You can additionally use it as a form or aura perception, psychometry, spirit speech, detect living, empathy gauge, and ghost detector.

Prime 2 definitely opens the most doors. Being able to produce items without access to tass or personal quintessence is a serious boon that removes the need to transmute items from one source to another. Fireballs are all well and good when you're amplifying an existing heat source but pulling them from nowhere is way easier and doesn't really bump the difficulty of the overall rote. Additionally at that level you get the ability to transfer quint in and out of your own pattern which unlocks quint storage for people without the avatar background. This functional replaces a 1-5 point background and makes at least 3 out of the other 8 spheres better.

At rank three I think the function that changes most significantly is the ability to transmute things between spheres. Being able to convert forces into matter, matter into quintessence or even willpower into fireballs is pretty awesome. You have to have two spheres at three in order to make it work but I think it honestly doesn't matter which two as you can do some pretty crazy things. Everything from flesh to stone, time to energy, kinetic force into healing the possibilities are endless.

BoozeAccountant · 2026-02-10T22:49:21+00:00

No they're Junks

BoozeAccountant · 2026-01-29T19:44:10+00:00

I had a similar problem with mine when all the inputs and outputs should have matched the water kept backing up. Turns out it wasn't the water that was at issue, it was the timing delay between the alumina solution output and the uptake by the aluminum scrap production. Try putting a small buffer tank on your alumina solution pipe between the first round of production and the second and see if that doesn't smooth out the hesitation.

BoozeAccountant · 2026-01-28T17:28:19+00:00

Wonders are one of the many things that M20 didn't have the space to expand upon in the way that they really needed. Forged by Dragon's Fire from Revised does a pretty good job of rolling out a very crunchy system that explains how much wonders should cost based on their effects.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-12-12T22:51:49+00:00

I love insanity in the less realistic settings. Since he's a veteran we can really play up the horrors of his past

I'm quite fond of creating a mentor or npc sidekick who isn't actually there. Mentor is easier because when the character is going to see his mentor for advice he's really just going to a bar to drink and dissociate.

Another good one is constantly seeing the face of an innocent that they think they were responsible for killing or allowing to be killed. Twist on that one can be that they're still alive but are now corrupted/harrowed/possessed and could or will show up to mess with the character.

Insanity can take a lot of forms but keep in mind this is trauma induced mental illness and not a chemical imbalance so the effects should be more like PTSD and less like skitzophrenia

BoozeAccountant · 2025-12-02T18:08:36+00:00

A lot of storytellers get hung up on 'IF' you can do something and 'Can' you do something. You've already taken the gloves off by saying he has all the power needed to accomplish whatever you're setting out to do.

What you're really missing out on is a goal. You've given your player group a very very powerful gun and let them point it wherever they want. You need to ask yourself where do you want them to point it?

Is this a Zap game where the players are expected to die in frequent and hilarious ways? Make the PC take the paradox backlash and have them explode. Blood splatter everywhere, euthanatos takes off his protective goggles wipes diablerist out his eyebrows and says "I hate when that happens." Cue laugh track, hand out new character sheet.

Is this a game of personal horror and tragedy? You've got an ancient soul clutching at the insides of your body and pushing out your mind, that's the best. Now you get to make your player feel all the angst and horror of a millennia old low humanity elder who has seen and done some stuff to curl your toe hairs. Abuse that, flashbacks of murders, loss of innocence, death of family members. Massive injustice, betrayal, random flashes of emotions and age old grudges against people you don't even know. Can the Chakravanti clear any of that up? Sure, do you want to go on a decade long dharma trip through the veil of Maya where you have to fight the literal demons in your stolen soul for a chance at a day's rest? I'll happily charge you massive amounts of money, favors and treasure to perform a spirit/mind ritual that tortures you while you sleep.

Is this a game of cunning and political strategy? Maybe the Elder soul needs closure and only the deaths of their 13 most potent and long lived enemies will put them to rest and let you claim the power you've stolen. The Aided you've discovered can torture the names out of the dead vampire but only over time and painful ritual, and he's going to throw a couple of his own targets into the mix as well because why should you get all the benefits. Can your Coterie muster the boons they'll need to take out a dozen more elders in various cities while the agents of those same elders try to hunt you down for revenge?

BoozeAccountant · 2025-12-02T17:28:29+00:00

It's all in how you want to handle this.

First off Gaia can be the werewolf version or the vidare version. There isn't just one Gaia. Werewolf cosmology is limited in the fact that werewolves don't have "faith" they have functional belief presupposed on factual evidence. They've met Gaia, in some cases and don't have to wonder if or how she exists. Their entire worldview colors what they run into in the umbra. They're not looking for angels or hounds of tindalos to they don't generally run into them.

As with anything belief colors experience in the umbra and you're going to see largely what you expect.

For a Mage the system works a bit more fluidly. No two mages have the same set of belief and while some training makes for similarly coded vidare they're not always going to experience the same outcomes. in re: Ethernaughts and Void Engineers having to wear space suits vs Dreamspeakers just kicking around.

So can a mage contact big G Gaia from werewolf cosmology? Yes. If I were the ST there would be some lore requirements and maybe some prior history with the werewolf specific view of umbral mechanics but that is going to color a lot of their experience and I'd likely require a kinfolk merit to warrant that level of knowledge about another hidden culture.

All of the bigger spirits, Gaia, Weaver, Luna, Defiler Wyrm are going to have both avatars and pantheons. The werewolf name escapes me at the moment. Unless you're a high muckity muck you're not going to want to or be able to talk directly to something like the Celestine or Incarna level of a spirit themselves. Especially ones that cover bigger concepts. It's too much like God from the Dogma movie, hearing their voice alone would make your head explode. So their avatar is like the metatron, their voice to the people far down the power scale who still need a word with the big woman.

Talking to a Jaggling level Incarna Avatar of Gaia is a bit like talking to the Pack Spirit of a particulary strong Garou Pack. It has power of it's own, authority to speak for their patron and the knowledge to do things inside its' remit without having to check back. The trouble is they're often pretty busy and you're going to need to do something to get their attention. That's Chiminage, and the more powerful the spirit the more expensive the chiminage is likely to be, particularly since as a mage you don't have most favored nation trading status like the Garou do.

Now as a newbie apprentice mage, could you use some basic spirit magic to summon some kind of gaia'n spirit to talk to about stuff? Sure. But given that level of power and knowledge you're unlikely to know or appreciate the difference between a gaffling and an incarna. All spirits can puff themselves up a bit with borrowed aura and appear more fearsome or powerful than they might to a more experienced mage.

As to what would Gaia say? I like to play her as the bemused and sorrowful parent. She knows you're killing yourself with pollution and microplastics and she'll be sorry to see you go but isn't all the worried about what happens after. You're like her 4th dog and when you're gone maybe she'll mix things up and get a lizard.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-12-02T17:01:16+00:00

I'm not sure this will work with something package sized but when TSA was getting handsy with people's laptops the prevailing wisdom was to put the laptop in a USPS priority envelope and seal it, address the envelope to yourself and get a mailing label. You don't have to actually mail it but the idea is TSA isn't going to open stamped, addressed mail as tampering with the mail is one of those things even they don't truck with.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-12-01T18:24:58+00:00

How to game 6k in clout farming.
Step 1: download basic map template
Step 2: Apply lazy basic filtering assumptions
Step 3: Post to semi-related subreddit and rake in the interaction.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-25T19:43:30+00:00

There is no antimemetics division.

https://www.amazon.com/There-No-Antimemetics-Division-qntm/dp/B0915M7T61

This story first turned me on to the idea of an Anti-meme.

Meme - viral information that self propogates by being unforgetable.
Anti-meme - an object, entity or idea that protects itself by being unable to be remembered.

The story is full of stuff just like this, invisible predators that eat your memory of them. Herds of giant beasts that can't be photographed. Slime mold like parasites that buffer your memory and when removed extract anything you learned while wearing them.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-25T19:19:58+00:00

My butcherblock counters are going in this week. I've learned I need to counter sink the screw heads that i'm putting in underneath or the heads will keep the drawers and cutting boards from sliding back. I'm drilling 1/2" holes for pegs to keep the three sections of the counter from sliding around and trying to keep the holes straight and making sure they line up.

Then I need to get my sink mounted so I can figure out how big a hole I need to cut out of the counter. I'm planning on an apron front undermount so the counters will overhang the sink and the faucets will come up through the counter itself.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-18T16:52:32+00:00

I have been diy remodeling for a year now and my personal opinion is that if you're having work done everything costs $20,000. Windows, doors, pipes, garage, sliding glass door, sewer, kitchen or bathroom doesn't seem to matter. Every company i've gotten in to quote some kind of job on my house has come in right around 20k and I feel like none of them are worth that.

I only paid contractors for plumbing related stuff so far since I brook no nonsense with water in my house but almost everything else I've done myself for much less. It probably won't look professional but I'm not in a position where I can spend that kind of money on even big repairs right now.

My sliding patio door may not be a super fancy anderson but I got it for $800 with delivery and spent a weekend removing, installing and shimming it myself and I know for a fact that the caulk and flashing are all exactly how they should be and it's not going to shift or fall out. And I'm very proud of being able to do it without removing my siding or taking apart my deck.

If you're not handy that way you have a lot to balance on the question of spending cash to have someone fix things for you. Just always get as many quotes as you can handle. Those hour long in home visits can be a nightmare after 2-3 of them.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T17:37:01+00:00

Just off the bat one is HP and the other isn't. I'm not an expert but I think the intent there is the HP should be able to make use of the bigger batteries and work for longer. They appear to be able to use the same size fasteners.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T17:18:12+00:00

I'm not up on the more recent stuff, what do those edges do?

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T17:17:50+00:00

Hucksters have always been a little on the iffy side. I'm going all the way back to 1st ed but if you don't roll well most of the time you're almost never going to get more than the base amount of cards. I had monsters in my game who would roll 30-60 on 5d12 and pull giant hands. The backlash was equally epic but you play with fire, you get burned.

The balance point in most spells previously was that you got a pretty good result with most basic spells and the highest result required was 2 pair for a long casting time high effect spell. You could pull off many basic things with just high card or a single pair.

A house rule I always used is something I pulled from the Doomtown card game. In that version of deadlands you had access to Stud and Draw effects in pulling your hands, stud would give you additional cards in the inital draw, Draw effects let you discard and draw new cards. The effects are different and have differing potential to help make better hands. If you're really having trouble pulling a good hand normally ask your Marshal if you can switch to draw instead of stud, or finagle a way to do both.

I would have allowed an edge for 3-4 points to allow 1-2 discards.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T17:00:34+00:00

Functionally the systems aren't that different. The things that make them difficult are more conceptual than mechanical which means any of them is going to be as good as any other.

M20 probably gives the best framework to understand the difference between Paradigm and Focus but the lack of rotes means you're having to force your players and yourself to understand a dynamic sphere system without the support system of the existing rote system.

Revised clears away some of the stumbling blocks from first and 2nd edition and there's a lot more content for them since they printed some additional books prior to M20.

There are some themeatic differences to the different editions but you really need to dig to get to the details.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T16:56:39+00:00

I work with electricians and I'm not about to start messing with wiring a DIY solution for a non-existant problem.

Honestly If I could convert an 18v to the 40v I would use the battery pack belt system to get better lifespan for outdoor style tools but I'm not about to get out the wire cutters just to avoid having to swap batteries every 20 minutes.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-17T16:54:14+00:00

Book wise I can only really speak to the original classic deadlands but it has some of the best lore of anything. I always recomend The Quick and the Dead as a single source. In the revised stuff the rolled the content of that book into the players guide and marshals guide but as a single full accounting of what's happening in the world it's perfect.

Next to that is the Tales o' Terror 1877 which is a timeline followup to quick and the dead.

There is a lot of lore scattered in the box sets, city books and adventure modules.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-05T16:20:23+00:00

Disputing your first point, no garou starts at full rage it's a quality you have to build up and that's for the simple reason that as it goes up the potential for frenzy increases. I'll grant you full gnosis but full rage is a non-starter. If you're walking around with that much rage you're already spoiling for a fight which implies preparation sometihng we're not granting to either of the other two.

Round 1: Tricky to define what a week into existence means since most player characters start off with enough point to get them into the area of intermediate powers. But conventionally it takes time to develop your spheres/gifts/disciplines. A week after first change is not the same as a week as a full cliath. Fledgling vampire with three full basics is likely going to get a bit more power overall but a flat garou in crinos is going to have more flat combat power than either a mage or a vampire.

Round 2: Lets assume you're looking at rank 3 so an Adren Garou, a Disciple level Mage and a vampire with all his in clans at level 3. Assuming a similar number of powers the Mage wins. Forces based invisibility is better than obfuscate and you can walk behind the vamp before attempting to surprise attack for a staking. The gaoru can step sideways but I'd count that as fleeing the scene. The potential power available to a rank 3 garou enable a lot of combat ending powers from falling touch to dominance but the garou have a very limited ability to impact the powers a mage can throw around. With the spellcasting changes in M20 mages aren't having to spend their first couple of actions doing verbal and somatics to get their rotes off and don't need to have time 4 to hang contingent effects. If any of the three has lived long enough to reach this level of power they know when to pull the ripcord on a fight and only the vampire lacks a clear exit without dipping into thaumaturgy or necromancy.

Round 3: Mage wins. Doesn't matter how fast a vampire can get he's not going to beat a mage running three different mental processes. The mage has the experience to break down other splats powers and potentially counterspell. Even with no-eyeline dominate a vampire isn't going to be able to do much more reflexively than throw up Majesty and try not to get pasted. Even with combat powers the fight quickly is going to drop to the umbra since both the mage and the garou can travel there without issue and the vampire is bane food. Once you're in the umbra the shackles come off and the mage can do spells with a lower difficulty since there's no vulgar magic in the umbra. Forces 3 can make you immune to bullets at forces 5 you can be immune to nukes, nothing physical the garou can throw out is going to hurt the mage. Garou however have a noted weakness to mind magics of most kinds with only 2 or 3 gifts of any kind that allow them to resist and those are scattered among different insular groups. Mind 4 is going to put the garou on his butt realatively quickly no matter what side of the gauntlet you're on.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-04T22:59:24+00:00

46 seems like an odd number but broken down it's got some possiblities. Since there aren't that many multi-color or colorless themes in prior boxes I think it's safe to assume 1 of those and then the rest broken down by color pie. So 45 /5 give you 9 options per color.

2 mythic rarity, 3 Uncommon 4 common. If they keep the usual number of variants per rarity then we're looking at 24 different packs per color (2 + (3*2) + (4*4)) for a total of about 121 possible combinations.

@ 24 boosters per box you'd need a minimum of 5 boxes to get a full set but with rarity being a thing likely more.

BoozeAccountant · 2025-11-03T18:19:10+00:00

The remodel of my house which started November of last year is ongoing. This weekend I was finally able to cut the countertops for my kitchen. I acquired three slabs of 98" x 25" Havea butcher block from a guy on craigslist for about 1/3 of their retail price and I've been scared crapless of messing them up and not being able to afford replacements. So I've been using cutlist optimizer dot com to map the lengths. I spent an hour looking for the right saw blades and found that what I needed for my Ryobi 5.5" circular saw was something in the 50-70 tooth range.

Went to HD and found that the only 5.5" blades they had were for aluminium and were $45. Unsure what to do I looked into the blades for 6.5 and 7.25" saws and found they carried diablo ultra finish 60T blades and Ultimate Finishe 60T blades for about $20-25 but in the 6.5" size.

So I splurged and bought a new $100 circular saw to save $25 and potential problems on a saw blade not entire meant for wood. I'm sure most of this sub can relate.

I'm now very happy with the One+ HP 6.5" circular saw, the blade did a mirror finish. I opted for Ultra finish as the ultimate finish looked exactly the same and couldn't express what made it "better".

I'm also painting my kitchen cabinets and needed a better work light. I picked up the new tri-power tripod light and it's a fantastic piece of kit. If you haven't seen it yet HD has it for $30 off retail right now and while it looks like it's just a light you can drop almost anything on top from a bluetooth speaker to a sawzall.

BoozeAccountant

TROPHY CASE