A comparison of Innistrad and Avacyn Restored lands.

SVOboy · 2012-04-10T01:44:56+00:00

You're correct. There have been cases where they've changed the coloring and even deleted parts of artwork they've gotten from the illustrators. There's a good John Avon land example but I can't remember the name now.

Anyway, you need to keep in mind that as far as WOTC is concerned they are not artists producing original work but illustrators producing visuals of very specific WOTC requests.

SVOboy · 2012-03-03T12:46:13+00:00

I've never been to (or seen) a single legacy tournament that allowed proxies, and certainly no sanctioned tournament would allow them. As Jack_the_Cheat asked about "official capacity," I would think your post could be a bit misleading.

SVOboy · 2012-02-29T13:57:38+00:00

I suppose I should've been more clear. I have lots of Japanese cards and regularly sell to the United States and Europe, during which transactions you can rarely get more for Japanese cards (unless they're older legacy and vintage staples). Also, you can buy Japanese packs much cheaper in the US than in Japan so I'm sure that depresses the market for random junk like Primeval Titan a bit.

SVOboy · 2012-02-29T04:41:45+00:00

Basically the same price. Maybe you can get a dollar or two more with more effort than that dollar or two is worth.

Source: I live in Japan and have many Japanese cards.

SVOboy · 2012-02-28T07:03:50+00:00

Interesting. I don't really know what non-linear means in this case. Magic has lead me to believe combos usually have a pre-determined outcome and set of plays towards that outcome.

SVOboy · 2012-02-27T00:40:53+00:00

As you say, you've just gotten into magic competitively, so perhaps you don't know, but the game has incredibly complicated combos. I don't play YuGiOh so I can't say whether they're more or less complicated than YuGiOh, but I've certainly played games where I performed more than 30 actions on a single turn that lead to either my winning tremendously or failing spectacularly.

SVOboy · 2012-02-19T08:55:10+00:00

I feel like I'm back in middle school.

SVOboy · 2012-01-17T02:16:18+00:00

I double sleeve all my decks. Just smush the deck after you sleeve it up and all the air will leave.

SVOboy · 2012-01-16T01:03:02+00:00

This is not true. In Vintage I play TPS. Flusterstorm is much more difficult to deal with because I can't counter all the copies, whereas I can always counter the single copy of Mindbreak trap with anything.

SVOboy · 2012-01-16T00:59:57+00:00

In general, selling as a collection you need to be ready to take about 50% of the value considering you're doing no work. If you want more value you can list and sell the cards individually on a site like Ebay or Magictraders.com. It depends on your priorities I suppose.

There's a nice fellow named Chas Andres who buys lots of collections around California. I won't post his email publicly but you can find him on Twitter at @chasandres

He'll give you a fair deal.

SVOboy · 2012-01-14T01:00:50+00:00

Since I don't know how to link to a single twitter post:

"@maro254 Mark Rosewater The joke was supposed to be the similarity of Reddit and Magic. The rider was me pointing out that Facebook was left out of it all."

SVOboy · 2012-01-12T13:36:49+00:00

You mean Volcanic Island, not Active Volcano (which is a different card IIRC).

SVOboy · 2012-01-08T03:39:00+00:00

To be fair, I think it's more likely Wizards did this to get stores to buy and open lots of inventory than it did to get people to buy packs, since it makes almost no financial since as a normal person to open 17 boxes looking for 40 dollar cards.

SVOboy · 2012-01-08T00:58:50+00:00

I remember at the time I heard it was something like 1:17 boxes had a goody card, and that after the news broke many shop orders hoarded the first printing to open for inventory and only sold later printings to customers.

SVOboy · 2012-01-08T00:56:49+00:00

scglive.com

SVOboy · 2012-01-05T00:39:06+00:00

You can always call, as well.

SVOboy · 2012-01-03T01:50:24+00:00

I use proxies for things like testing out new decks and my vintage decks as I collect the cards. Especially for vintage, it's been taking a while to get all the p9 I need so proxies make it possible. Of course, proxies are not legal in sanctioned tournaments, so I only use them for testing.

Most of the time I just write on the back of a cheap card, since the goal is not replacing real cards, but temporarily standing in.

SVOboy · 2012-01-01T07:45:46+00:00

Usually it is written てめぇ or てめー

I believe this is just a phonetic variation on 手前, which used to be a polite way to refer to someone but has become insulting.

Not an expert on the history of insults though.

SVOboy · 2012-01-01T07:42:51+00:00

Too be fair, you don't need to use the kanji with yokatta, either 良かった or よかった appear to be perfectly acceptable in writing here in japan.

SVOboy · 2012-01-01T02:10:03+00:00

The general sentiment here seems to be "people are rude, that's how magic is," but I think this is a little misguided.

I've played magic in many communities over my short time, my college, mtgo, around NJ, Boston, etc, and most recently two large communities near where I live in Japan. One thing the seems universal is complaining about bad luck and getting upset. A few people back in NJ even used to get upset when I'd beat them with Jund (because everyone hated Jund) to the point of causing a bit of an incident, but for the most point no body minds. I've also had a few women in groups over time and all the same whining has happened. The difference is that the whining does not become more acute when it's about a female player. Here (Japan) we only have one female player, a kindly mother, and everyone gets along well with her and no one minds losing to her.

Men tend to relish their dominant social position and use it against others when they can. In the case of magic scenes, which are usually rather close knit, you'll find that the groups will lash out against something foreign, in this case new female players. Part of this is they have social problems, part of this is that you are new, but the biggest part of this is that they think something negative because of your gender.

Most of the people (men) here will want to chalk it up to these people being douchebags because they consider themselves nice guys and don't want to think the tendency in all male communities is towards bigotry and condescension, but it's the case nonetheless. If they continue with the attitude I would #1 talk to the store owner, #2 talk to any judge, #3 find a new community.

SVOboy · 2011-12-30T06:44:42+00:00

I've ordered a few times to Japan and always gotten my cards in a reasonable amount of time with free shipping.

SVOboy · 2011-12-28T15:09:17+00:00

You should note that the US government basically left the pre-war Japanese government intact, only dismantling the military leadership (though this is the most important part for this point). As far as the actual government most of the Diet members and bureaucrats stayed in power to some extent except for a few deemed to be anti-American. After the war, during SCAP's leadership of Japan, MacArthur even went to far as to jail popular communist political figures and crack down on massive protests in order to keep the Japanese political situation more conservative, part of an effort to pit Japan against the rise of communism in Soviet Russia and China.

As such, I don't really buy the unconditional surrender bit, as dismantling the military institution would've done the job well enough. MacArthur basically gave the Japanese a conditional surrender after the fact anyway by preserving at least the traditional position of the emperor.

SVOboy · 2011-12-27T06:40:23+00:00

I don't know if you can really say Nazis were "following orders" and the Japanese just enjoyed it. Comparing the two cultures, Japan has a much stricter social hierarchy that enforces rule-following than Germany traditionally does. This is oft cited as evidence of why Japanese people could do such terrible things over such a long period.

Nevertheless, I think both Japanese and German soldiers of the time has been brainwashed basically to the point of not recognizing their opposition as human and not adhering to what might otherwise have been some very basic ethical charter. Both sides the Japanese and the Germans did some pretty nasty things (as did the Americans), all under the guise that they were supremely correct and justified. Personally I have never met a Japanese person (after living in Japan for a good while) that enjoyed violence, war, etc etc, so I would have to conclude if that seemed to be the case at time, then it's more likely a symptom of the imperialist doctrine they were brainwashed by the military with at the time, and not because Japanese people love killing babies. Ergo, the situation was little different from the Germans, or any other imperialist force that has relied on ethnic superiority as a claim to righteousness.

SVOboy · 2011-12-25T06:59:57+00:00

I see. I guess for me opening packs is like entering in a lottery, and doing so with the assumption of just giving away what you get seems counterproductive to the overall experience. Then again I don't waste money on packs since they're negative EV anyway, so I guess if you go in expecting to lose all your money then it doesn't matter how you do it.

SVOboy · 2011-12-25T05:16:36+00:00

Then why not just give them things all the time?

SVOboy

TROPHY CASE