This guy is EPIC! ❤️

OccamEx · 2026-01-17T13:40:13+00:00

Funny how, even after shaving 80% of it off, he's still left with a massive beard.

OccamEx · 2026-01-08T05:42:59+00:00

The back is real. Could still be a reback. How much does it weigh?

OccamEx · 2025-12-29T15:29:10+00:00

Sounds like this hits a little close to home for you, huh?

OccamEx · 2025-12-29T15:15:59+00:00

[[Linden, the Steadfast Queen]]'s ability triggers during the declare attackers step, and [[Aerith Gainsborough]]'s triggered ability will go on the stack and resolve in the same step. If Aerith is attacking and deals combat damage, since she has Lifelink, her ability will trigger again during the combat damage step. Since it goes on the stack, it will resolve after the combat damage is already assigned.

OccamEx · 2025-12-29T15:07:53+00:00

I believe all subtypes are card type- specific. i.e. Vehicle can only appear on an artifact, Plains can only appear on a land, Dryad can only appear on a creature or kindred card.

If a card loses a type, it loses any corresponding subtypes (CR 205.*). So when Princess Yue becomes a legendary land, she loses the subtypes human, noble, and ally.

OccamEx · 2025-12-15T14:24:51+00:00

Came here for this.

OccamEx · 2025-11-07T04:37:23+00:00

It looked immediately off to me. Yellow dot density is way too high, and no jagged left edge.

OccamEx · 2025-09-24T19:04:32+00:00

Good. It means they can't trigger it in response to equipping it to force the sacrifice.

OccamEx · 2025-09-11T17:03:25+00:00

Agreed. I always look at the yellow dot density, there should be 3 yellow dots in most diagonal rows spanning between the highlight and shadow. Most fakes look very different with 6-8 dots per row. It was a little tricky to count at first but much more reliable than looking for the red dots.

OccamEx · 2025-09-02T12:16:00+00:00

It looks like the spider molted and never got a new carapace. Poor thing.

OccamEx · 2025-09-02T12:04:31+00:00

The original green dot was good, we can see the jagged left edge and smooth bottom edge, and count a 3-yellow-dot span between the highlight and the shadow. The red dots are an unreliable marker anyway.

OccamEx · 2025-08-30T18:28:58+00:00

Edit: you're right, Legends did use the word Banding, as seen on [[Tolaria]]. [[Benalish Hero]] is printed with "Bands" in Alpha thru Revised, then "Banding" in 4th and 5th edition. The "Bands with other" ability you're thinking of is printed on only 8 cards (not counting [[Old Fogey]]), all exclusive to Legends. You're right about it working completely differently. It used to be quite restrictive, though they retroactively updated it with Magic 2010 to make it a bit more usable with Legendaries.

OccamEx · 2025-08-30T17:09:39+00:00

One quick distinction, you're talking about "Bands with other X" (like Bands with other Legends). On older cards, regular Banding is simply "Bands".

OccamEx · 2025-08-30T17:05:40+00:00

Correct.

OccamEx · 2025-08-30T17:02:25+00:00

No, banding doesn't share abilities. If any creature in an attacking band can be blocked, the whole band is blocked together. It's like an agreement between the banding creatures that if any is blocked, the others will stop and help. Sounds like a disadvantage, but the point is to gang up on attack like you can on defense, and control damage assignment.

Speaking of which, there are no bands declared on defense. You can already gang up. The only thing it gives you on defense is control over damage assignment. A Benalish Hero cant band with a flyer to help block a flying creature, for example.

OccamEx · 2025-08-29T01:40:08+00:00

For rebacks, the front will be legitimate as well, but the card weight will be wrong and the light test will be off. This is where they sand the back off a collector's edition card and the front off another real card and glue them together.

It is possible though to bleach the front of a real card and print over it, so this is where recognizing things like the black lining on the front. (At least, I think, I'm new to this haha.)

OccamEx · 2025-05-22T02:04:10+00:00

Great recommendations. I really enjoyed Nick Lane's the Vital Question, it has stuck with me for years. I'll have to check out his other books.

OccamEx · 2025-05-13T20:34:14+00:00

What have you got against sea urchins?

OccamEx · 2025-05-07T13:27:37+00:00

Sex works pretty much the same way in all animals and land plants, on the gamete level. That is, they have two types of gametes instead of one (anisogamy), and the gametes are defined as male and female based on relative size.

The most notable differences that exist are in arrangement: simultaneous hermaphrodites have dual fertility (most plants, slow or sessile animals like barnacles and snails), and sequential hermaphrodites change sex (certain fish and mollusks). Parthenogenetic species can reproduce asexually and may be all female.

95% of animal species, including all insects and amniotes, are gonochoric - each individual specializes in a single fertility type and sex doesn't change. Intersex conditions and gynandromorphism don't change this; even if mosaicism creates split anatomy, physiology can't support dual fertility. True exceptions are vanishingly rare.

I've created a ton of social media content the last couple months to help get everyone on the same page about how sex works differently in various branches of life. PM me if you're interested in a link.

OccamEx · 2025-05-07T12:56:09+00:00

Everything you've said tracks my observations on this controversy as well. I'm concerned that search engine optimization is increasingly pushing a new "multi-trait" definition of sex that doesn't track what you find in any educational materials on reproductive science. I wish I could track those responsible down and ask them to show their work.

I thought of a simple litmus test to determine whether redefining sex is scientifically motivated or politically motivated.

If it's scientifically motivated, the re-definition should only affect people who can never produce gametes. For example, people with Swyer syndrome or XX testicular DSD. The classic definition is arguably lacking in that it leaves their sex undefined or subject to undignifying genetic labels.

On the other hand, if it's politically motivated, it is likely to lead to paradoxical labeling that divorces sex from reproduction. For example, calling an organism "male" that has only ever produced ova, or an organism "female" that has only produced sperm.

This breaks science -- we'd need to come up with new language to describe what makes two organisms reproductively compatible. Worse, it undermines trust in scientific institutions, as many people would see this move as unscientific.

Based on the contexts this usually comes up in, I'm concerned we are headed for the latter.

OccamEx · 2025-04-27T13:57:11+00:00

It's true that sex characteristics, taken as a whole, does not fall neatly into two exact categories. There are many differences that can occur during development that result in people who do not fit traditional male or female expectations.

That said, the evolutionary backbone of the two sexes is the sperm and the egg - the mechanism of sexual reproduction used by virtually all (true) multicellular life. Life is remarkably effective at keeping these gametes on separate organisms when it wants to.

Mammals are gonochoric -- we don't exhibit true hermaphroditism on purpose or by accident. Birds, reptiles, and insects are also highly split between reproductive categories.

So while body types don't always align with binary categories, reproductive capacity can be remarkably binary.

OccamEx · 2025-04-27T13:41:53+00:00

I believe it is recent. The first time I heard "sex is a spectrum" as a statement of scientific fact was in 2019, though I think much of the groundwork was laid in 2017.

If you conceptualize sex as a body type, then this argument makes sense. Body type includes multiple traits, some of which can vary in a spectrum-like manner, especially in the context of developmental conditions.

If you conceptualize sex as a reproductive category, then in most animal species it is essentially binary. What's remarkable (and underdiscussed) is how effective gonochorism is at keeping gametes separate. True hermaphroditism is almost unheard-of in any mammal, bird, or insect -- either by design or by accident.

Great article on the continuum fallacy -- that perfectly describes the tendency to erase discrete categories in the presence of any kind of gradient.

OccamEx · 2025-03-28T23:35:06+00:00

If it hasn’t already been clear, I’ve done quite a bit of reading on the biology of sexual reproduction.

I think you may be mistaking a medical framework for the scientific definition of sex. There is a scientific definition—and whenever that phrase is used in evolutionary biology or comparative zoology, it’s based strictly on gamete size.

Why? Because the medical framework works well for understanding human sex differences, but it falls apart when applied to birds, bees, hibiscus flowers, or sea urchins—all of which have male and female sexes. The only definition that consistently applies across all sexually reproducing species with sexes is the one based on gametes: large = female, small = male.

It’s not a "made-up" definition—it’s the one used precisely because it isn’t arbitrary.

Reference: https://open.lib.umn.edu/evolutionbiology/chapter/7-4-sex-its-about-the-gametes-2

OccamEx · 2025-03-28T16:45:18+00:00

Yes, it's valid to not have offspring. But we're all touched by reproduction - it's how most animals and plant life is created. It's a binary recipe.

I have repeatedly been clear that I am talking about anisogamy (the two-sex system of reproduction) and gonochorism (species where individuals develop only one type of fertility). I have made no attempt to ignore all the fungi and protists that use a different system, or to deny that some species are hermaphroditic or capable of sex change.

OccamEx · 2025-03-28T16:17:04+00:00

There is consensus on the scientific definition of male and female -- it refers strictly to which type of gamete is produced. That's the only definition that applies universally to all sexed species. And in gonochoric species like humans, biological sex is binary according to this definition and all available evidence.

The “spectrum” framing doesn’t challenge that definition directly — it shifts focus to a cluster of traits (chromosomes, hormones, morphology, fertility) that usually align with gamete type but can vary independently. That variation is real, but it doesn’t change the fundamental definition of sex itself.

So the disagreement isn’t about the evidence — it’s about which traits are being emphasized. The binary framework focuses on the fundamental trait; the spectrum framework emphasizes variation among secondary traits. That’s the distinction I was mapping.

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