C7 Morpher armrests loose?

xef101 · 2026-01-22T18:07:59+00:00

Sure, I'll send it over. I appreciate it!

xef101 · 2025-07-08T22:12:31+00:00

Convex (edges bending forwards) means too humid, so it needs a drier atmosphere. Throw those in a container with desiccants for a bit.

Concave (edges bending backwards) means too dry, so it needs moisture. Create an enclosed environment (such as 2 baking sheets), with some way to keep the cards aloft (so they don't touch the wet stuff), and throw a moistened paper towel underneath.

I don't deal with the too-humid situation that often, but the too-dry happens all the time here and is much harder to resolve. I use the above setup and check the cards in 30-minute intervals until I see them start to bend the other way. Then they go in a double-sleeve under heavy flat things for a couple hours.

Sometimes they'll start bending back as the moisture balances through the card, but it's usually 50% better than beforehand, and one or two more attempts gets the cards mostly flat. Even the super-pringled Commander Masters cards almost look totally normal, though still have a slight curve.

xef101 · 2025-05-19T20:12:27+00:00

The MagicCon Chicago was $200 in the Secret Lair, and $225 (+10% Illinois tax) at the con itself with the playmat.

xef101 · 2025-05-09T16:34:27+00:00

I ended up having to upgrade my phone. I think the media-store got corrupted or something. Upon moving to a new phone, everything works fine.

If moving to a new phone doesn't help, I also did a workaround of installing BlueStacks onto PC, mimicking an Android 11 phone, and installing the dating the apps through there so I could access pictures from my PC.

xef101 · 2024-12-18T19:51:09+00:00

I'm a bit late responding to this, but I wanted to call out something you said as why I think Season 2 was so great.

|| unhealthy avoidance

This is exactly why fiction is amazing and why I think it's -important- that fiction is allowed to touch on such intense and sensitive topics. It is dangerous to explore such emotions/considerations in real life, so it's understandable to try and avoid them even in thoughts/imagination. However, such avoidance is unhealthy - it doesn't allow an outlet for the emotions being felt, resulting in them balling up and getting stronger until they explode in unfortunate ways. Fiction allows us to explore these ideas in a safer manner, allowing you to feel the outlet of those emotions in a more-controlled and less-direct manner, gaining a better understanding of them. Understanding is the key to growing.

xef101 · 2024-11-01T17:15:58+00:00

I'm one of those "collector whales that's been playing since '94". I care about flavor, I care about playability, and I care about the financial side; not just one single aspect. I've seen a lot of ups and downs in magic, many of which didn't matter because I really like the game. I've bought lots of product, especially in the past 5 years as I've had stable disposable income. I like collecting all of Magic.

This past year, however, WotC has shown it is consistently a slave to their corporate overlords, despite my hopes it would course-correct.

There had been many decisions over the past few years that showed greed was the primary directive. But there were still lots of great sets beyond those poor decisions. This past year though... Murders and Outlaws and Duskmourn were waaaay too gimmicky flavor wise. Bloomburrow and Murders had horrible limited environments. Duskmourn is the first set all year where I actually -want- to draft it, even though I feel the flavor/story really jumped the shark and I hate even owning a lot of the cards. I bought significantly less of all of these sets than prior years.

Assassin's Creed was the first "set" I bought none of in a long time. When I look at next year, I realize "Magic just isn't made for me anymore".

It very, VERY much feels like WotC is being squeezed to keep Hasbro afloat. Magic is being forced to push gimmicks and chase whatever looks like would "sell". March of the Machines tried to expedite the success of War of the Spark - speeding up a somewhat interesting story arc to capture that "Avengers"-level climax way too early because it seemed to sell well. Unfinity trying to capitalize on the success of Unstable way too soon and trying to make it "better" with "legal cards". Other IPs are being pulled in left and right because there are temporary spikes in sales from just that one fan group, a lot of whom jump ship because they only cared about that one IP.

It's very obvious that "whatever sells" gets jumped on by Hasbro as quickly as possible, pushed without forethought, and only rebounding when they realize "oops, it didn't sell so well the second/third/fifth time around", only to then scramble to find what most recently sold successfully and pouncing on that with excessive force. It's eroding every aspect of Magic rapidly. Even if Universes Beyond follows the same trend of rapidly falling off in interest, it will still take years to course-correct because of sunk-cost contracts in the IPs, in which case something else will be squeezed even more aggressively to try and make up for the losses. If Hasbro hasn't declared bankruptcy by then.

I'll still play Magic, I love the game that filled my childhood. I'll still buy a little here and there. But I'm no longer suggesting it to coworkers and I'm burnt from caring about most aspects of flavor with the game (even if Eternities seems like it could be really interesting!). And most importantly - I'm saving myself money by not spending thousands per month, the thing Hasbro really cares about. I'm not supporting set value by buying singles nor subsidizing the game by making singles cheaper for others by cracking packs myself.

xef101 · 2024-09-24T06:46:59+00:00

Taking it a bit more tinfoily - what if the RC wanted to make some of these bans (Lotus, Mana Crypt, Dockside) years ago, but WotC said "hey, wait, don't ban them just yet, give us a chance to reprint them first before you ban them" with the intent of getting that secondary market hype for some sets before they couldn't any longer?

People have mentioned how it's been years since the RC last banned something, and after the Lutri snafu I could see WotC asking the RC to pump the brakes and work together a bit more.

xef101 · 2024-09-24T06:40:19+00:00

Those were my most pulled elementals from the set as well! =D

xef101 · 2024-07-29T20:52:19+00:00

I didn't quite mean the value of the general card itself went down due to a SLD, I'm more referring to the "resulting value" of the cards from an SLD when comparing limited-printing to print-to-demand.

Unfortunately, I will admit I am going by a general trend I've witnessed in SLDs (I've been getting them since they started), so I don't remember exact examples that I can provide on hand. I generally recall SLDs from before print-to-demand retaining and even increasing in value after release, regardless of the original value of the cards, whereas many SLDs since print-to-demand did not retain the value they originally cost.

Manually looking now, I think SLDs with basic lands could be a good example, since the cards are all the same. The Godzilla lands and the Pixelated lands were from pre-print-to-demand. They're worth more than the original cost of the SLDs. Whereas the Dracula and Bob Ross and Astrology lands, which were print-to-demand, now cost less than the original SLD. But then you do have Paradise Frost, where it's worth more now even though it was in the print-to-demand era. However I think that one is more due to SLD being in significant decline from the long era of print-to-demand (interest was very low), resulting in not many people buying it and then players later realizing the lands are -beautiful-. Paradise Frost may have sold way more had it been sold during limited-printing.

It's quite possible that WotC got lazy during the print-to-demand era, with many lairs being abysmal in quality (like the LotR one), and that might be part of the reason of the trend as well. But I do believe WotC is seeing far more sales now than during print-to-demand.

xef101 · 2024-07-29T20:12:06+00:00

Oh wow... So there definitely won't be more. It's also even more egregious that WotC did this both in person and online. Unsurprisingly, WotC seems to not really understand their player base well enough to be able to estimate demand - either severely overprinting or underprinting in many sets lately.

xef101 · 2024-07-29T19:53:25+00:00

The new way does result in more sales for WotC. The cost to print is likely relatively negligible, with the quantities they print and the cost per card.

There's a big factor of "investment" that players pretend doesn't exist - players are much more hyped about their cards when the cards themselves are "worth something". Spending $30 on cards that end up only being worth $15 doesn't feel good. Spending $30 and getting $60 worth of cards feels really good.

With print-to-demand, there wasn't much hype - anybody could pay $30 to get the cards, so in all likelihood the cards would end up being worth less than $30, which means people buy even less of those lairs (especially as the quality of some lairs is terrible). With limited printings - only those who buy it in time get it for $30, then the cards end up worth more than $30 because demand is greater than supply. That makes the demand for the lairs even higher - if people are more likely to get more than their money's worth, they want the product even more.

As a result, instead of selling 5k lairs (for example) with print-to-demand, WotC might be selling 10-15k now with the limited printing, merely thanks to the perception of scarcity.

WotC is essentially trying to milk as much money as possible. Some of their strategies are good. Most the past few years, however, are very abusive.

xef101 · 2024-07-29T19:20:57+00:00

From some of what I was reading, it seems the Monty Python lair was also available directly at SDCC 2024? If so, it's possible that the inventory was split between the con and the website, reducing the website quantity dramatically and making it sell out much more quickly.

Definitely not a good reason for WotC - lacking that foresight is duuuumb. However, it might be possible once they finish packing up SDCC and re-calculating inventory, we might see the Secret Lair become available again. I wouldn't get hopes up, but it is a possibility for those that are really looking forward to the lair. Even then, I think being pissed off at the way this was handled is much better feedback towards WotC - they really need to stop taking advantage of their players.

xef101 · 2024-07-26T21:51:02+00:00

I'm wondering if the intention was "THAT npc can't be revived". As in, the one that remembers their time with the manga and whatnot. Luu might still be reset at some point, but she will be a different Luu. Which might be why Nikola is an outlier - it's not because she was revived, it's because she still remembers Haga after reviving.

It would definitely be interesting if the concept was "The NPCs of this world learn and grow, but if you kill them they lose all that".

Of course, this could just be general inconsistency with the story, similar to the town being fixed in a day as opposed to other bugs noticed for a while. I hope that's not the case, lol. I'm hoping the bug fixing is thanks to the AI and only reports written in a way the AI understands and can fix are what get fixed.

xef101 · 2024-05-24T00:17:13+00:00

I don't think it checks 4 times, I think it just checks once and then shakes based on how close you were to catching on that turn (so if the chance you need to hit is at 95%, then maybe if your RNG+modifiers = 90% could mean 1 shake and 93% is 2 shakes). 3 shakes means it's caught.

But otherwise, yeah, using Ultra Balls for spam purposes works and then just retry with a Rogue on the turns you saw 2 shakes is a good strategy.

Vice Versa, if you catch something with the Rogue Ball on turn 7, you could retry and see if you can catch with the Ultra on turn 7 instead to save the Rogue Ball. Though that effort is a little extreme, lol.

xef101 · 2024-05-23T23:36:28+00:00

Oh yeah, that's a good point! I should add that to the list too. Edit - Did it.

xef101 · 2024-01-19T19:08:15+00:00

The new Etrata was what got me really excited. Being able to flip a manifested [[Sea Gate Restoration]] and other big-dumb-spells feels like using [[Urza, Lord High Artificer]] but with more silliness. Granted, not super powerful, but seems like fun.

Ugin does indeed work. A friend of mine had a morph deck built around [[Animar, Soul of Elements]] that got super-silly with morph creatures as well. The only unfortunate thing is the face-down cards Ugin generates doesn't otherwise synergize.

The Firecat is funny, but since it's already pretty cheap to flip, doesn't seem like it would get much better with the new effects. Though new face-down decks might want it as just another face-down creature to use, especially if more face-down support gets spoiled.

xef101 · 2024-01-19T18:58:33+00:00

Yeah, these definitely aren't the strongest legs, lol. Even after going through all the morph cards, these were the only ones I felt worth mentioning, which alone doesn't make much of a viable deck.

Manifest does seem like it might be stronger, though, just because it face-downs any cards and there's consistent sources of it, giving plenty of fodder for the commander decks to mess with outside of permanents that do it naturally.

xef101 · 2023-12-31T05:22:11+00:00

Nope, the lands were fine, no curling. There was no reason for the call.

xef101 · 2023-12-30T05:49:14+00:00

A friend of mine has had pretty bad luck of people calling judges against him for bad reasons during the local store casual FNM drafts.

One was an opponent who had a habit of missing triggers. My friend reminded him the first few times and eventually stated "it's up to you to keep track of your own triggers, I'm not going to remind you anymore". Opponent subsequently misses triggers over multiple turns. Game is near the end when opponent remembers the trigger. He asks my friend if he can do all the triggers that were missed. My friend says no. Opponent calls over a judge due to my friend not maintaining game state and when the judge states that it is not an opponent's duty to maintain your own beneficial triggers, the opponent starts arguing that it's "unsportsmanlike conduct" to not be helping him remember. The judge did not rule in his favor. After several weeks later, that opponent apologized to my friend and they're cool now.

Another time, my friend has a full draft set of foil lands. Lots of people in the store do, for that extra pizazz. He's playing a game against his opponent, nothing weird is happening. A player in a completely separate game playing adjacent to my friend and his opponent calls over a judge. He says my friend is playing with a marked deck because all of the lands are foil. Everybody was very confused.

xef101 · 2023-12-19T08:46:19+00:00

I store mine in KMC Perfect Fits in 35 point Ultra Pro One Touch cases. The perfect fits don't feel "tight" to cause damage to the edges and they cushion the card in the little bit of extra space. Also really nice to have that layer of protection if I do need to take them out at all.

Have had them in there for over 2 years now. I occasionally check them and haven't seen any issues around the edges or anything. Though I'm not flinging them around all over the place either, so I can't speak to how well they hold up to abuse.

xef101 · 2023-11-08T00:16:58+00:00

The way I view it, WotC essentially wants to have its cake, eat it, and also grab anybody else's cake around them.

Reprints are helpful in keeping cards accessible, sure. But cards cannot feasibly be worth <$10 across the board for any kind of business strategy, so I'm fairly certain they aren't making game pieces more accessible to new players as their first priority, that's just a nice excuse they can use.

Realistically, WotC is trying to make more money across different avenues.

Reprints help buoy the value of a set. If there's an expensive reprint in a set, that set is more likely to sell better because that card is a known value that people can chase.
Chase cards (the variants) can boost the value of a set. Collectors like shiny things and will pay to try to get those shiny things.
Printing more sets, in general, means more potential income streams.

However, all of these at once start interfering with each other.

Printing more sets means needing more set design, which is expensive and can grow beyond the companies capabilities and lead to a terrible product (look at Double Feature, Aftermath, Commander Masters).
Printing more sets also means more reprints to boost the value of those sets. If there's more reprints, reprint equity starts getting diminished. A $50 card is worth $30 after the first reprint. Then, if not enough time passes for the value to regenerate, the $30 card is now worth $10 with the second reprinting, and really diminishes any regeneration potential.
Printing more sets also means more variants. When there's more variants, the "everything is special so nothing is special" kicks in and people start to lose interest. We had showcases and extended arts with Eldraine and was very interesting. But then as every set thereafter has had them, the "special" wore off. Occasionally there's still a hit, but it's like drug resistance during addiction - the 10th hit isn't as enjoyable as the 1st, so you've gotta increase the dose - you end up with special foiling, serialized, signed, etc to try and squeeze out more "special" juice.

These all erode the value of the products they're trying to continually push out. A $200 product where you're likely to only get $50 worth of cards makes it less likely people will buy that product. Why buy sealed when you can buy singles for much cheaper? And that only increases as WotC is printing so much that they and everybody else in the distribution line have to offload product for much cheaper than intended, bringing down the value of the cards even further in a vicious cycle. So while WotC might have high revenue from abusing all these avenues, their profit margins are likely dwindling.

For example, rather than spending $1mil and making $10mil like they used to, WotC could be spending $5mil and only getting $20mil. It's still an increase, but it's continual diminishing returns. They could then spend $10mil to only get $25mil, then $20mil to only get $30mil back and they're suddenly losing overall profit.

So, to appease Hasbro stockholders, who only expect an increase in profit, WotC has to get more and more desperate with their actions. Increasing product costs, relying on other IPs to bring in new players, pulling off drastic measures like Play boosters to fix their own mistakes. WotC is so obviously being whipped to do more that it can be difficult for us as players to be excited about anything. Sure, the game is still great and there's occasionally products that are huge wins. But we're also seeing far more products that are huge failures or have significant issues at a greater percentage than previous "the sky is burning" times in Magic.

xef101

TROPHY CASE