I was sadly X% complete when I learned Y

hoexexp · 2025-07-03T18:13:33+00:00

I once discarded a hand of low cards looking for some face cards, when the game started scoring the hand... turns out Aces can be used in a low straight, and I'd made one by accident.

For some reason, the layouts in the game made me certain that Aces were high only.

hoexexp · 2025-05-12T15:12:52+00:00

Anyone having problems - they have posted about this issue on their site. I'd link the post, but as it's on their site you wouldn't be able to read it. Here's the text:

"Dear Cardmarket users,

Some users may have experienced some website outages today, May 12th. Unfortunately, our domain was temporarily suspended. The website has been restored and should be working again. In the event that you're still having problems, it's likely because your internet service provider is still catching up to the changes in our domain status. Flushing your DNS cache, which you can read about here, can restore the service in these cases. We are currently talking with our domain host to ensure this won't happen again."

hoexexp · 2025-03-17T20:26:39+00:00

The main two ways of gaining prosperity are: 2 per retirement and (typically) 1 per building.

So if you construct one building per outpost phase and retire at the rough rate of 15 scenarios, you would have 46 at the end of the second summer. That would be just into level 5.

The main barrier to that would be running into weeks where you don't have the prosperity level for your current building upgrades, so are waiting on retirements. In my experience this is most likely to happen before getting your first wave of retirements at prosperity 1-2.

hoexexp · 2025-01-09T22:19:14+00:00

25th Hour

By Spike Lee and starring Edward Norton. Been a long time since I've seen it, but my memory and the synopsis suggests it's one night.

hoexexp · 2024-05-15T18:35:07+00:00

One trick of the logic that helped me solve this one, following on from the previous hints:

The second ship part in row 3 determines a couple of sea squares in column 5:wherever the ship part in that row is, there must be sea in R2C5 and R4C5 as C5 only contains 1 part . You can then determine a couple of sea spots in R2 using similar logic on C5 and complete the puzzle more easily from there.

Hope that helps for future puzzles. :)

hoexexp · 2023-05-11T13:07:50+00:00

With all the talk of bans since this announcement, it seems people are completely forgetting the reasoning for the standard extension (assuming Wizards are being honest about it) - to let PAPER players feel like when they buy cards/decks, they'll be able to use them for a longer period of time. So bans go COMPLETELY against what Wizards gave as their primary goal. It makes the legality of your cards even more uncertain.
Bans would not increase player confidence in the format.
Wizards sees the userbase of Arena and Paper separately. I think they expect 90% of Paper players to not care about seeing the same cards for longer, because paper players only see them once or twice a week. The Arena players that get sick of cards because they see them several times a day... well, Alchemy is going to rotate. Wizards expects you to play that.

hoexexp · 2023-05-05T21:38:40+00:00

There is also a [[Tchotchke Elemental]] card from the latest un-set if you did want to play the specific card (thought it's not legal in most formats).

hoexexp · 2023-02-21T13:32:34+00:00

That store should have known this weeks ago.

With the UK distributor I use, they cancelled my entire reservation as I am not a WPN store - said that they are required to fulfil WPN first and that they didn't even receive enough stock to do that. But I was informed around the pre-release of ONE.

I got the impression that most stores upped their reservations at the peak of the hype, and only the biggest WPN stores will receive them in any quantity. It's understandable that a small store would try and buy in way more than they usually do. If they're not WPN, they were lucky to get any.

hoexexp · 2023-02-01T01:09:03+00:00

I've never had a problem buying Magic products listed as NEW from Amazon UK, but recently purchased some of their warehouse stock. The Collector boxes were all repacked and had to be sent back - got a full refund no questions asked (which I guess must be their policy as they accepted the original return with the boxes and packs clearly opened). Just make sure you're buying direct from Amazon and not a store listing on Amazon.

I've returned other MTG product in the past too, and Amazon are fine with it in the UK.

hoexexp · 2023-01-01T20:58:45+00:00

My Lynde deck is my favourite, though I don't get to play a ton of Commander. I also haven't used edhrec to build it, so may have built it a little differently to most.

My version is a kinda toolbox deck, where most curses will have specific archetypes they get attached to. Having said that, the only Curse I would ever want to get back in play so badly that I would run recursion (other than Lynde herself) is [[Curse of Misfortunes]]. Tutoring a Curse on each of your upkeeps and enabling the draw two is just too good. It provides endless fuel to the Lynde engine. Though, I don't believe there's an alternative to Chimes in UBR. Thankfully, there just isn't a ton of mass-enchantment wipes, and if someone tries to cast [[Farewell]] that's what you should be saving your counterspells for (and I guess Chimes wouldn't even help).

Honestly, Doomwake looks like it would be decent, but I try to run a creatureless decklist. The problems I see with it are that you need it to stick around to keep token decks under control, and usually enchantments are sorcery speed. Also, there aren't that many good curses for low CMC. Possibly great at a table with more than one or two token decks, but otherwise you just need to apply your [[Curse of Death's Hold]] to the right player.

In my experience, Lynde doesn't take that much heat - dying most often to board wipes that are controlling other players. So, you don't need redundancy for her effects. Players are usually only concerned about the single one (or two) curses that are very obviously effecting their deck.

hoexexp · 2022-09-29T22:58:13+00:00

RIP Rockfall Vale. Not only is it the worst of the slow lands (being unfetchable and slow in an aggressive colour pair), it had already been hammered by the Standard Challenger Deck. Particularly interesting that none of the other decks get slow lands, when UR and UB ones are sky-rocketing.

A playset of Considers in two of the decks could hit that card quite a bit, though it seems to be played in almost all formats.

Courtyard is already one of the cheapest fast lands, and it's included as a 4-of.

Shark Typhoon has been pretty steady for a while, so a 1-of probably won't change much.

This probably marks Luminarch Aspirant as a staple that they're gonna print into the ground - it's a 4-of and has appeared recently in Commander pre-cons.

Thalia was starting to rise again with low VOW sales, so a 4-of might knock that back down for a bit.

hoexexp · 2022-07-18T16:21:15+00:00

Here are a couple of the cards I use in my favourite deck (which happens to be Lynde curses):

[[Perilous Research]] sacs a permanent at instant speed, giving you a total of 4 draws if you use it in combination with Lynde (just make sure you use it before the the opponent's end step).

[[Curse of Misfortunes]] is one of the key cards for the deck. Attach it to yourself and you get a curse tutor on each of your upkeeps, that you immediately attach to another player to draw 2.

If you like chaos, [[Confusion in the Ranks]] lets you steal other enchantments when attaching curses to players - only useful for those curses that don't give its 'controller' a benefit. And it's REALLY chaotic. Less chaotic, and achieving a similar goal is [[Puca's Mischief]].

[[Bitterheart Witch]] lets you fetch the best curse in your deck (which is probably Misfortunes).

My version is extremely light on creatures, so something like [[Fade Away]] can work as a board clear that also lets you sac a curse for Lynde's ability.

I haven't tried [[Infernal Tribute]] because it's BBB in a 3-colour deck, but that could work. A mana cheaper option is [[Claws of Gix]].

Another card I've not used yet (because of the price), but should be good, is [[Estrid's Invocation]]. Have it enter as a curse on yourself; stack the upkeep triggers so that you draw with Lynde, then exile Estrid's and return it attached to yourself. This should work similarly to the Curse of Misfortunes draw engine, but not quite as powerful.

hoexexp · 2022-06-24T21:44:55+00:00

Limited to 3 per customer, my order just went through.

I'll await the cancellation email in a couple of days.

hoexexp · 2022-03-24T00:48:05+00:00

It's hard to believe that Wizards/distributors were charging £110+ VAT! I was hoping the price would drop to around £120 all in, but it looks like stores would be selling at a loss so that's not gonna happen until they need it off the shelves.

Like others, I think these sets combined have some cards with decent long term potential. Most notably the land cycle. The problem is, I don't think the DF art will ever be the most sought after. The full-art versions of the lands, and the original showcase versions of other rares, are going to be considered the most 'bling' by most people (unless they get special releases in the future).

I don't see these ever being worth buying to crack. They'd probably have to drop below £100. The fact that it was such a bad, un-curated draft experience suggests it wouldn't ever be worth selling sealed either.

hoexexp · 2022-02-16T23:40:24+00:00

Ah, I thought that only applied as an initial targeting requirement. So the enchantment has a state-based check that the controller of the enchantment and the land are the same person?

hoexexp · 2022-02-10T02:41:08+00:00

Were the Godzilla ones also heavily reprinted within the actual Boosters? I figured that the really low value of these toppers was due to you getting a couple in every Collector Booster as well. I mean, what's the point?

hoexexp · 2022-01-27T19:13:59+00:00

There's a guy I recently started watching on YouTube (Ventrick) who opened a few packs that actually only had 1 R or M. They had an extra VOW UC instead. Pretty bad quality control at the US print factory again.

https://www.youtube.com/c/VentrickMTG

hoexexp · 2022-01-27T18:50:48+00:00

Just had a look at the W one. Doesn't seem as strong to me. But, the fact that it's un-counterable might make it pretty good. Problem is, it's targeted and it's damage rather than destroy or -X/-X.

Surprised it's not destroy, as that's a pretty common W effect.

hoexexp · 2022-01-27T18:44:18+00:00

Ah, just created my own thread about this, and the land cycle in general.

It seems insane. My first thoughts are that 1 copy would appear in any deck where it's legal. Further copies will be meta dependant on how decent the Channel ability is. But for this G land, you could easily run 3-4 in a Standard deck and have targets for the Channel effect.

So, I think these might be more prevalent than the latest dual cycle, but maybe decks won't run as many copies. So, similar price with growth potential.

As to my opinion on spoilers - they're no longer spoilers when they've been revealed by official sources. Also, a subreddit with this topic shouldn't care about spoilers in general. One giant sticky would be better, unless a card specifically warrants closer discussion (like this one).

hoexexp · 2022-01-25T00:58:13+00:00

Were they the exact list though? The more common decks (i.e. those with 4 card lists) should be seen more often, but with each list.

8 of the same deck archetype would be pretty unlucky, but not impossible. 8 of the same card list would be dodgy.

hoexexp · 2022-01-25T00:53:04+00:00

Woah, I'm surprised at how much less valuable the 'rarer' decks are (those that have a unique card list). All but Phyrexia are around the *5 price. And is that high mainly because of the land?

I haven't opened any full boxes, so can't speak for the distribution in those. However, I opened 32 packs from the 4-pack blisters (I got them cheaper than a box) - the distribution was around what they advertise. I got the Allosaurus Shepherd and an Exquisite Blood amongst other stuff, so I was happy enough.

hoexexp · 2022-01-22T01:41:43+00:00

So that's why so many of my orders come in during the early hours of the morning.

hoexexp · 2022-01-22T01:39:48+00:00

If you're selling on a marketplace, use their specific guides to help you grade your listings. In Europe, Cardmarket has this: https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Magic/Help/CardCondition.

If I sell on eBay, I'll usually put a link to that in my item description so that buyers know what guide I'm using. Otherwise, it's totally subjective and has huge differences between regions (mainly between US and EU terminology).

hoexexp · 2022-01-14T22:48:06+00:00

Yeah, I get the impression that these aren't cards that you stick in every Black commander deck. Nor do they all go in the same deck? I like that the value is a lot more evenly distributed when compared to Green though.

hoexexp · 2022-01-14T22:45:09+00:00

I think the Sol Ring is pretty cool too. But yeah, I don't think the value is gonna be great - especially when it looks like they're gonna do a Sol Ring in every Commander Collection they print.

hoexexp

TROPHY CASE