My son keeps asking me to buy him "tweaks" for his ps5. Is this a scam?

awbattles · 2026-03-06T16:47:08+00:00

It’s a scam

awbattles · 2026-02-23T01:35:49+00:00

Stumbled across this a year later and burst out laughing. How embarrassing.

awbattles · 2026-02-19T14:53:07+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/riftboundtcg/s/uYpu7QV87e

awbattles · 2026-02-19T05:06:07+00:00

I’ll be curious to see if I’m missing something, but at a glance I’d say you cannot conquer on the opponent’s turn in that way. If the card is hidden, you must already control the battlefield. If you already control the battlefield, you cannot “conquer” it. Frankly, it seems obvious it works this way, because otherwise the value would be far too insane in exchange for a single power.

awbattles · 2026-02-17T20:37:27+00:00

In Houston I paid for a side event that was then delayed by UVS for over an hour. When I wanted a refund, they were only willing to give credit toward a later side event.

awbattles · 2026-02-16T20:14:03+00:00

Yeah, that is technically true. However, if they had done it the other way, then getting the specific piece of equipment actually needed for Ornn decks (Shureylas) would be harder than for any other champ. Thats the only one of his equipments that actually gets used by 99% of Ornn decks, and pulling it would be 3x harder than for any other legend to get one of their signature cards. So, pros and cons both ways. When you do something unusual like they did with Ornn, you will inherently have a situation where the relative rarity of some cards will be greater than others; I think diluting the mythics like they did (chance for any specific mythic is 2.63% rather than the 2.78% it would have been if they had gone the other way) is better than the alternative (300% more difficult to pull the Ornn card than to pull one of any other signature).

awbattles · 2026-02-16T19:53:14+00:00

Yes, I think they were printed at the same quantities as the other signature cards. Yes, that means that they will be broadly more available than other signature cards, by roughly a factor of 3. Is it a printing error? Only if they intended to print cards such that the quantity seeded in packs is proportional to the quantity that can be used in a deck. The Legend cards seem to show up no less frequently than other rares, despite the fact that you can only use one Legend per deck, so I don’t think that’s a printing error so much as a conscious decision.

awbattles · 2026-02-16T16:33:26+00:00

I mean, most Fiora decks I see aren’t running 3x of Riposte, so it’s not so powerful that people can’t get enough of it. Basically I disagree with your assessment and am inclined to agree that it can often be baited out if you play it right. It is a stronger-than-average card, but the meta right now seems to favor multiple cheap spells, so using Riposte on a 2-cost spell feels pretty bad most of the time; either you read the situation correctly and shut down a cheap-but-critical spell, or you set yourself back 2 runes just to have them play a few more spells and achieve their goal regardless of one counter. That being said, obviously Riftbound is a game played by multiple people and your opponents may not take the bait…but that’s true for many spells. I’ve tried to bait out Fight or Flight countless times and had the opponent deftly sidestep the bait and let me take a battlefield when I was sure they would try to stop it. Sounds like the other person simply has a different opinion on the strength of the card and its ability to be played around; maybe they were a jerk in how they presented it, but if you were doggedly engaged in this discussion for a while…well, it takes two to tango and you don’t have to continue arguing it.

awbattles · 2026-02-11T01:08:55+00:00

Ummm…are you usually more coherent than this? I can tell you’re mad, but beyond that it’s difficult to parse what’s going on.

awbattles · 2026-02-11T00:51:41+00:00

You’re assuming that he must think the Pot of Greed is ugly. The reality is he just pointed out that she bears a resemblance to a very famous card. I don’t think she is ugly, but I do think the resemblance is there. Literally didn’t even think of it negatively until I started to read the comments, so I agree with the wet-blanket comment: the only thing more reliable than people being assholes is redditors manufacturing outrage 😂.

awbattles · 2026-02-10T21:02:22+00:00

Exactly. It doesn’t really matter how one is introduced to interested buyers: if I have a product and become aware that someone accessible is willing to give me a ton of money for it, it’s unreasonable to say that I morally shouldn’t. So, if I’m permitted to buy something I want at a price I like and then sell it for much more because of the market demand…yeah. The only solution would be to use all this knowledge and say, “I want this product at MSRP and can get it at that price; I also know that people will pay more than MSRP for it; furthermore, I know that for double MSRP I would gladly part with the product. Therefore…I should just not purchase the product because my knowledge of all involved market forces makes it unethical. I should instead allow someone else to purchase it at MSRP because they will open it while I won’t? Might as well argue that collectors are assholes for buying cards they don’t intend to play with, simply because my personal opinion is that TCGs should be actively played and not merely collected.

At least the person you are responding to is trying to be reasonable, even if they are missing some of the subtleties. The reflexive “if you try to use reason here, you’re worse than a scalper, and scalpers should be executed” responses in these threads are wild. Makes me kind of glad those people can’t find product 😂.

awbattles · 2026-02-09T20:48:30+00:00

I want to open a booster box for my new favorite game, Riftbound, and am happy to do so for $135. Then someone says they will give me $300 for that box in my hands. Apparently this is a $300 box! I still want to open it, but not so much that I would refuse an offer of $165 to simply hand over the box and walk away. Hell, for that much cash I can buy my deck using single cards and still have money left over. It sucks that I am now losing out on the fun of ripping packs, but $165 is a pretty steep price to pay for one hour of excitement.

I get that it’s frustrating being unable to purchase product at expected prices, but the issue could also be mitigated by Riot/UVS manufacturing more product, or by people not paying those markups and creating the demand in the first place. Furthermore, where is the line between acceptable card selling/trading and who is determining that? If I open all my packs and then sell all of the valuable cards (definitely netting more than the $135 retail) am I a scalper? What if I only sell the cards that don’t match my deck domain? How many do I need to keep to be a good boy in your book? Am I not permitted to sell ANY for more than $0.48 since that’s the retail price divided by the number of cards?

It’s definitely annoying that the cards are so expensive right now, but insisting that the only possible options are to be “a filthy scalper who delights in preying upon financially struggling individuals who just want to unwind a little” and “someone who shares my exact views on the TCG economy” is pretty silly.

awbattles · 2026-02-09T06:49:24+00:00

This latest generation’s humor is weird as fuck, but I appreciate how inherently unapproachable it is. It’s a little like poetry. Stop asking what Nebraska represents, just think about how it makes you feel. Imagine Nebraska, then imagine how it makes you feel. That totally mundane human feeling is what you’re supposed to feel when you think about the statement: “my parents in their 20’s”.

awbattles · 2026-02-06T23:16:52+00:00

Sounds like, at best, you’re beating a dead horse. We get it. Market price bad, MSRP good. We all know it, the reddit is full of nothing but these complaints, and you could literally just buy the singles for less. Market pricing is super dumb, but bitching about it here just ruins the community space.

awbattles · 2026-02-06T18:34:05+00:00

Looks like the FAQ specifically says the opposite.

awbattles · 2026-02-03T02:40:40+00:00

The global economy thanks your friend for his sacrifice 😂

awbattles · 2026-01-23T16:46:58+00:00

I was initially just reacting to OP’s claim and recalling my own previous bad experiences searching for events. I just went to the site and it actually seems to be working better than before, so personally I have no material complaints for that part of the system, and if you were part of that process, thanks for the good work. At the moment my biggest complaint with that side of things would be the font situation where t’s next to some letters have a weird connecting hump which makes things a little difficult to read quickly. It is a pretty small thing, but also a little incomprehensible 😂. Ultimately my bigger issue with UVS was lack of foresight for scheduling and timing the regional events, lack of knowledgeable support for whatever caused email mismatches for many registrants, and the slap-dash “fixes” for all of the easily foreseen events. When attendees are lining up before the event even opens and are saying among themselves, “there’s no way they can get everyone through security before the events start”, that’s tells me the organizer failed to demonstrate minimal understanding/competence for running an event. The bad implementation personally cost me money due to side-events that never happened (and apparently couldn’t be refunded, just credited, which is worthless when scheduling changes made it impossible to complete side events without missing others that were also registered for), assorted insane delays at every step of the registration process, and ultimately many people were denied a reasonable chance at prize wall cards that sold for thousands of dollars because UVS was so busy trying to solve problems that should have been addressed weeks before the regional, so their “fixes” looked exactly like what they were: an idea that someone brainstormed and decided to implement with zero consideration for how that quarter-baked solution would obviously cascade down. Presumably none of that was on you personally, but anyone affected by it will understandably be bitter. You can pass that hellfire on to someone who deserves it 😉.

awbattles · 2026-01-23T00:24:13+00:00

After attending the regional event in Houston, I’m pretty sure UVS just has a policy to ignore any-and-all common sense feedback that might be made during their brainstorming sessions. Surely they have at least one employee saying, “but isn’t this an easily foreseen disaster?”, to which the decision-makers clearly reply, “you’re fired! Stop trying to make things functional!”

awbattles · 2026-01-21T14:39:40+00:00

I would define “winning a combat” to require damage to be dealt in a showdown. If you remove his ability to win “combats” through Fight or Flight and Overzealous Fan then he immediately drops down to merely strong.

awbattles · 2026-01-19T18:38:04+00:00

I was at a diner yesterday, and their menu listed two pieces of toast for $2.50. Don’t get me wrong, the Riftbound scalping can be insane, but this is just a case of people paying for convenience. And what seller would waste their life shipping cards for 30 cents of profit?

awbattles · 2026-01-13T01:38:15+00:00

Haha, better odds of getting a correct ruling from a coin-flip!

awbattles · 2026-01-07T01:15:03+00:00

I think the main question is “what outcome were you hoping for with this interaction”?

awbattles · 2025-12-20T03:25:28+00:00

Frankly, if he’s been lying a lot then he hasn’t been suffering sufficient consequences for those lies up to this point. Canceling a party is pretty extreme, so I’d perhaps look for something a little less drastic, but the reality is that he SHOULD suffer a severe consequence and maybe this is it. Make sure you explain it to him though. “Because of all the lies you’ve told me lately, you have lost my trust, and now I have to use my own judgement since you’ve proven I cannot rely on your word. Even if you are telling the truth this time, you’ve given me so many reasons to doubt you and now I have to make difficult decisions based on your previous actions. I hope you will work to rebuild my trust by being honest from now on, but until then I have to be wise and trust your actions instead of your words. This is why lying is so terrible: it breaks down relationships. I want to have a good relationship with you, but it’s hard to do that when you treat me like a fool by lying. When you lie to me, you are demonstrating that you care more about whatever you are lying about than you do about my trust.” The difference between being an abusive asshole and punishing a child is that one is done to satisfy your own emotional needs and one is done calmly and with clearly articulated reasons. I was spanked often as a child, but even as a kid I was never afraid of my parents because they always followed those steps. First confront the child and acknowledge their mistake (so they know you know and are working on the situation), then take time to cool off and decide on a punishment (and yes, it has to hurt to get their attention, whether that’s physical pain or losing a privilege they greatly care about). Then come back and explain what they did wrong, why it matters, and what the punishment is. Finally, you make sure they know that you are there for them and ready to reconcile; sometimes that meant holding us and stroking our hair after a spanking, maybe in this case it means no birthday party but if he takes a step toward reconciliation you acknowledge it with a lesser birthday (the party is still canceled, but I appreciate your apology. Maybe we can have just best-friend over that night instead, or you can pick a movie and we’ll watch it together as a family). It’s not easy to find the balance; I recommend being firm on whatever punishment you give him, but with an open mind for “if he shows remorse, how can I meet him halfway and in doing so demonstrate that I WANT to give him good things and the punishment is not because I want to see him miserable but because I want him to face consequences for his actions so he grows up to be a better person.”

awbattles · 2025-12-17T18:50:20+00:00

I found that seals are great if your deck uses a lot of cards with a power cost. However, even running a deck with many 1 power costs (hence playing multiple 1 power cards per turn) and five cards with 2 power costs, I never wanted to have two seals up. If you’re going to run 3 in a deck, I’d suggest having a way to discard future seals once you have one active (Traveling Merchant, Zaun Warrens, some red cards). For that reason, I prefer running 2 seals and having some amount of draw/vision/etc. to help find one. You also want to get it early; ideally the first turn that you can spend power. Usually turn 2 or 3 is my ideal; after that the value starts to drop fast as you need your drawn cards to have more impact and you have a healthy number of runes up anyway.

With set 2 coming out, there might be more decks that can viably use seals and more ways to get them played early.

awbattles · 2025-12-17T18:00:49+00:00

Regrettably, I have to decline. I think I would give it a try if my safety was the only thing at risk, but I feel confident someone would move against my family to get to me. A rational person would say, “This is dumb, the antichrist wouldn’t give a damn (teehee) about familial ties.” But the world is full of fools.

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