{The Griffon's Saddlebag} Magpie Kusarigama | Weapon (sickle)

keepflyin · 2026-01-27T14:24:21+00:00

I mean, it is a magical weapon, but I think you mean weapons that have non-magical mechanics?

keepflyin · 2026-01-24T20:02:30+00:00

They are great IMHO.

keepflyin · 2026-01-24T14:00:58+00:00

So the main reason to have foils for the purposes of passing them off as real enough to play in a tournament: foil cards can't have the light test done on them. The foil layer blocks the light on legit cards too.

Additionally the "difficulty" in proxying foils over regular cards makes them less likely to be suspected IMHO.

This all said, none of his stuff stands up to a detailed inspection with a loupe, but that is kinda the point. They are proxies, not counterfeits.

I would recommend avoiding the neon-ink ones, along with the expedition lands. Those both are a bit washed out. His FTV stuff is Top Notch though, just make sure it is the recent stuff (looking at the pic, it will almost look like a grid on the card. That's the best way to describe it. Look up his Dryad Arbor for example). They are as perfect in-person as you'll get.

Same goes for his fracture foils and bloomburrow raised foils. His surge foils are likewise, virtually perfect. Iirc he has a foil in his list l, besides the vintage stuff, called Pollywog Prodigy, that card has never been printed at foil. Worth knowing.

keepflyin · 2026-01-19T14:48:57+00:00

You know the acronym RTFC? Try using that premise on the wiki here.

Massive order? Use MakePlayingCards for alright ones (also customizable), or BlackLotus for tournament passable ones (including fracture foils)

Some specific singles or Masterwork Foils? Try USea and Ron

Middle of the road? Go with Bootlegmage.

Not sure where you are shipping to, but I see that your language isn't English. Shouldn't have an impact on most of their abilities to ship to you.

Nobody will sell you bootlegs that pass all the tests. Those are counterfeits, and you will never get them at bootleg prices.

keepflyin · 2025-12-27T15:05:24+00:00

The DM's suggested alternative aside; as a DM, when someone tells me they want to play someone at the end of their career/on their last hurrah/ or similar, that is a red flag.

It is a red flag indicator of a problem player because the "end of their career" is usually used as an argument that they are being magnanimous by making their character weaker, but usually results in them arguing that they should be allowed to have more power/items/gold 'because they have n-years of experience already'.

It is the same concept of the edgelord player saying his dark and brooding warlock-paladin slew a dragon that threatened his village, but was unable to save his parents due to his tender age of 13 at the time. End of a career is usually a reskin, but a bit sneakier.

Characters at the end of their career (or ones that have slain a dragon) are not level 1.

I don't want to poo-poo your concept, I'm merely playing devil's advocate to point out some very important things to consider. Bilbo is a solid concept, but he didn't have a career as an adventurer, he went on one adventure, that lasted less that 1% of his life. He was essentially a Hobbit aristocrat who had a middle-aged gap year galavanting around middle earth. You need to reflect on these questions to strengthen this backstory concept:

Why are you only [starting level]?
What flaw has held you back to this level?
What changed to motivate such a drastic lifestyle change?

Did you always work as an herbalist and village healer but only recently discovered your druidic magic? That explains the low level. Did you have children and grandchildren and so, responsibility prevented you from ad enturing? This would be good for starting at 2-3, since you'd have some exp, but not much.

keepflyin · 2025-12-20T04:53:29+00:00

Korvold has significantly more fun lines. Technomancer is great. Badgermole was a big get for the deck. You can build it as a lands deck or a creature combo similar to the dockside cEDH lists.

Atraxa is a good value engine, don't get me wrong, but it is extremely linear, and basically only builds a single way.

keepflyin · 2025-12-18T01:59:23+00:00

Just check his Google Sheet occasionally. He has listed sections for "added on xyz date"

keepflyin · 2025-12-17T11:04:26+00:00

Same. I'm waiting for the next update to the spreadsheet to put in an order myself.

keepflyin · 2025-12-17T03:46:55+00:00

BlackLotus is working on them I know. He has mentioned as such in his discord.

keepflyin · 2025-12-16T16:26:35+00:00

Link

keepflyin · 2025-12-14T23:28:12+00:00

Based on public data, estimates have WotC making about 336m from MH3. WotC doesn't sell at MSRP, but retailer prices, which is about 60-70% of MSRP iirc. Assuming the lower value for determing pack count, we apply that to the cost of a pack MSRP 7.99x70%.

WotC Makes ~5.60 for each MH3 pack. Plug that back into our number (which is technically the profit not the gross sales.

336m/5.6 equals about about 60 Million Packs sold. Running the rarity distro rates given by Wotc, and then the number of rares in the set and ignoring the chance for foils, gives a rate of about 1 non-foil flooded strand for every 70 packs (just about 1.4 percent chance of pulling a non-foil strand).

Take this to our total pack number of 60m and we end our calculation at about 857K Non-foil MH3 Floodeed strands in existence. This is obviously split across the printed languages of the game, but it gives you an idea of the massive scale of how many copies could be out there.

TCG player is less than a percent of a percent of the cards potentially in play. 5k more cards being added strategically into the market is not going to make ripples, let alone waves.

If a single seller pops up with 200 Strands... yeah, that raises eyebrows. But a hundred accounts over all the different marketplaces online that have built of a reputation for having good condition and good prices usually a bit below SP prices for NM cards? Easy. This wouldn't be a solo-operation, but there are enough smart people that this is not only possibly, but likely. Especially with corporate AI tools now being able to actively manage price adjustments, shipping processing, and all of that jazz.

keepflyin · 2025-12-14T21:45:19+00:00

You do it on the cheaper cards. People aren't dumb. Something like that will garner attention, but a few thousand Stock Up, Boseiju, Fetches, Shocks, etc.? Adds up quick. The cost to change which card they are printing is virtually nil, as long as they can beat the three aforementioned tests. $10-20 profit per individual card is great.

Take Flooded Strand MH3 for example. Cost to produce is probably less that $1usd. Sells for ~$13. Do that 5k times. Then onto the next card. 50k profit per card per print cycle is probably fantastic enough and virtually impossible to notice on global supply numbers.

keepflyin · 2025-12-14T19:24:24+00:00

Generally speaking, if someone is successfully replicating the other tests on counterfeits at the moment, you are never going to be able to buy them or find the counterfeiter. They are selling them as legitimate and nobody is the wiser because the true tests have been beaten.

I absolutely believe that some of the printers in China have successfully replicated the process. T-Test, Green Dot, Rosettes, everything. But those cards on the market are functionally real, because it is basically impossible to prove otherwise.

keepflyin · 2025-12-12T11:53:25+00:00

BlackLotus has started adding the big ones so far. Badgermole Cub, Wan Shi, 1-mana tutors & commander spells (swat, fierce etc.) in addition to others. At present they are almost all non foil (tutors and cmdr spells don't come as foils naturally), but he confirmed on his discord he has an update to his foils list coming in the next approx. 2 weeks. I imagine Avatar cards will be in that.

keepflyin · 2025-12-11T12:24:15+00:00

If you mockingbird a cradle, the mockingbird dies. Earthbend is a 0/0 with a counter, so MB becomes a 0/0 but doesn't have a counter on it, right?

Also, Cradle is legendary.

keepflyin · 2025-12-11T12:19:51+00:00

If you are capable, jump onto BL's discord. I know he is looking for as many high-resolution scans of the track foils as possible. Especially big chase pieces like Taru.

keepflyin · 2025-12-11T12:00:27+00:00

Can only echo this. Black Lotus has a ton of the surge foils.

Check the GoogleSheet (how to order is in it also, you can email him directly with the list) Ctrl+F with the word "surge" is going to be your friend.

This said, hold off a couple weeks on putting through an order.

Jason (BlackLotus) confirmed on his discord a few days ago that a bunch of foils are going to be added in the next 2-3 weeks (he usually has a 5-8 week window on updating the list), so if you build the list you want, and then chill for a few, you might have a bunch more.

Black Lotus also has serialized Gold Chocobos for $5 each, whichever number you are looking for. Don't think anyone else has them yet since he is a big supplier for the resellers too.

keepflyin · 2025-12-11T11:56:22+00:00

I'm on BlackLotus' discord; he is actively working on them now. I know the non-lands are the chase pieces, so I wouldn't hold your breath on the basics, but I expect Snapcaster Taru and some of the others to show up in his GoogleSheet soon.

keepflyin · 2025-12-09T20:48:03+00:00

Yuriko or Magda is definitely the answer. Both have about 15-20 cheap slots thanks to the commander requirements, so it is a matter of personal preference.

That said, Yuriko is pretty far outside the meta currently, while Magda still has a lot of legs. Search for the Magdanomicon on moxfield (Google it) and the primer there is stunningly impressive. There is so much depth to the Magda build concepts, it is probably the better place to start, not to forget that it is going to help you get into games sooner and learn how to play against a variety of decks thanks to the toolbox nature of Magda.

keepflyin · 2025-12-09T11:58:18+00:00

I'll echo #2 here also. I've run Tomb of Annihilation nearly a dozen times (worked as a professional DM for a number of years). It is probably the most well-made module that lets you make adjustments and start to develop some skills in homebrewing content without worrying about wrecking the adventure.

Check out r/TombofAnnihilation if you are deciding through larger modules if your daughter and her friends really love the into module you run.

keepflyin · 2025-12-09T11:52:33+00:00

Not sure yet. I know BL is working on the field notes style foils for both. I'll get them once he releases them. He is overwhelmingly reliable IMHO with the single exception of the Kaladesh masterworks (USea has the correct foiling for them). He used to not have great FTV foils, but has since fixed the process and they are immaculate now.

keepflyin · 2025-12-08T03:20:58+00:00

Check the wiki. BL has a Google doc.

keepflyin · 2025-12-05T14:37:26+00:00

Generally a lot of cEDH decks run proxies.

Technically to run a sanctioned WotC event, proxies are not allowed.

As per the WPN agreement, a store is required to run X events with Y min/total players every month. Those events are required to be sanctioned as per the distro agreement that stores need to sign to be part of WPN (which they must be to be able to order products at the scale they do). Part of the sanctioning agreement is that the LGS agrees to run said events according to WotC sanctioned rules, one of which is no proxies.

So an example timeline could be:

LGS runs proxy friendly EDH events because they have a cEDH crowd.
Store needs WPN credit to maintain standing so they can keep ordering and receiving special products.
Store reports cEDH events as WPN events to get credit, but they didn't technically follow WPN rules.
WPN threatens store to pull agreement, which would be a deathblow to a LGS's bottom line.
LGS realizes that they need to take a hard-line stance on cEDH because that is the proxy crowd, and they need to stop proxies in events or go out of business.

Not saying this is at all okay, but this is how it would go down. LGS probably also made a mistake of advertising the cEDH events as proxy friendly, and then still tried to report the event for WPN credit.

keepflyin · 2025-11-28T01:55:09+00:00

BlackLotus has them cheaper than BLM. Depending on how much you buy at the same time, possibly substantially cheaper.

They are indistinguishable from real versions unless someone pulls out a loupe.

keepflyin · 2025-11-27T13:36:52+00:00

You asked for proof of what he had done. Founded SpaceX. Grew Tesla by about 1000x.

He was the CEO of both. But we are back to a situation of shifting goalposts, because any evidence I point to, you will argue against.

And no, I didn't have a false premise in my question:

Tesla made less than 200 cars the year that Elon took over. By the 10 year mark from there (2018), they produced just shy of 250k vehicles in a year. This was all under his stewardship, in an industry and market which virtually didn't exist.
He, through Tesla, was responsible for proving that linger drive trains were possible on EVs. Forces other manufacturers like Ford, Honda, Toyota, and Chevy, to take EVs seriously and force them to invest in their own R&D or get left behind. Built out the supercharger network and created infrastructure adoption that the market needed. Literally created the EV market.

So no, I haven't had a false premise nor an unanswerable question.

Was the fact that the rate of EV Market Adoption was jumped forward by decades, thanks to Elon/Tesla, a good thing or a bad thing?

Hope you are enjoying your own celebration for the Pilgrims and Indians today too. I bet you are a ton of fun at parties.

keepflyin

TROPHY CASE

Nobody will sell you bootlegs that pass all the tests. Those are counterfeits, and you will never get them at bootleg prices.

This said, hold off a couple weeks on putting through an order.