Messaging in the playmat is 👍 I had already decided to cancel attending Shoebox for safety reasons. Risking health/detainment for this can be worth it, but not in my case. Each of us have a different risk/reward ratio for attending, and each of us have different ways of helping the resistance. ❤️

Bought my tickets for ticketed play events for MagicCon: Las Vegas 😄 Got a nice spread of sealed, draft, commander, and [REDACTED].

Catching up on Hasbro x H_arry P_otter news, If Wizards funds Hasbro initiatives, & Hasbro profits from HP - it still makes sense to respond by changing how we buy/promote Magic, yeah? From a consumer perspective, not as a creator or Wizards employee. Each of us are different. Resist accordingly.

Catching up on the latest with Commander, it looks like my Lutri Kaboom EDH deck is finally legal! Here's my 2021 blog post about the deck: medium.com/millingfor53...

I usually wait for some kind of special release, omnibus, or box set before getting a certain comic / manga series. For Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated., I might be waiting about a decade for a CHANCE it'll get rereleased in a new collection .🤔😱 (I've never read it.)

Happy to see the responses to this because it vindicates the Baten Kaitos devs, assuming the following is true: I had heard Monolithsoft once pitched "clay Earthbound" to Nintendo - it was rejected. The pieces used for the pitch were repurposed for this odd clay town found in Baten Kaitos Origins.

Stumbled on an old Fa_cebook post I wrote in 2020, shortly after we discovered Tr_ump lost the el_ection. Reading the sentiments, it feels like I could have written this today.

Was watching the show Poker Face with my partner; and, boy, did I not have on my bingo card @themountaingoats.bsky.social popping up on my TV 😮 Hi John! 👋🏻

My partner is not usually one for TCGs, so when she approached me about maybe trying out the CookieRun TCG together; I was, like, "say less!" ^_^

Using an Oubliette Magic card as a bookmark. Feels appropriate for when I tuck the card away, buried within the pages while the book lies dormant.

Was casually watching some early DBZ when I noticed Gohan's passion for bugs began a long time ago. 🐛🐜🐝

Was grocery shopping when my partner overheard another person who looked our way and was passing by us tell the person they were with "...it's a game..." UNBEATABLE fans are amongst us 😱

Same energy: Pui Pui and Matthew Patel.

I'm no longer attending the Shoebox Magic: The Gathering event. The event itself is cool. Current events of the area have scared me away.

Was running errands & the following paraphrased convo happened w/ 1 of the usual employees I chat w/: Them: "Play any games lately?" Me: "Yeah, Jet Set Radio." Them: "Awesome game." Me: "Figured it was a good follow-up to UNBEATABLE." Them: "Dude, I love that game." Me: "No way, you've played it?!"

*exhales, choked up* Rolled credits on UNBEATABLE. Let's rewind. *takes a deep breath* Apr 9, '25: Learned about UNBEATABLE, joined Discord server, followed @dcellgames.com Sep 1, '25: Visited UNBEATABLE popup @ Pikarar & Friends, took pic w/ peeps Jan 6th '26: Finally posted pic ty, peeps <3

Recently gave up my admin powers for Beacon of Creation Discord server. This follows ending my hosting the podcast a # of years ago. Luckily, it's easy to do this thx to other passionate peeps who already server-moderate &/or podcast-host. I'm freeing up energy for new card game design ventures 🤘🏻

Happy New Year! I made a lil marketing teaser for the fan set I'm designing for the DBZ CCG (the one published by Score in the year 2000). This will be my second high-effort card design project for this out-of-print and "dead" card game. ✌️

Seeing any of the Lorwyn Five* again for Lorwyn's return is like writing a love letter to a certain generation of MTG players. *Lorwyn Five are the first five planeswalker cards, debuting in the first Lorwyn set.

Obligatory future cosplay - Bradley the Badger : www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1I...

If you're looking for an alternative to The Game Awards, there's the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival.

Continuing my 1st playthrough of Pokemon Emerald today and discovered this NPC trainer. It's common wisdom yet bears repeating; but I mostly wonder how much influence this peep has had on kids playing this game growing up.

I usually buy singles or play Limited for card acquisition. Never bought myself a Secret Lair, for example. But buying ASAP the actual product for the "The Destined..." cards seemed like the right move, financially. I wish these Magic cards were non-foil. (This isn't a price or curling concern.)

My fave Magic plane is Kylem (Battlebond's world) because every adult there knows sign language. (I'm a CODA & have some Deaf cultural upbringing.) I haven't read this, yet. I look forward to seeing how Abigale's adventures might do lil nods toward the d/Deaf experience of living in hearing spaces.

One day, I stumbled upon a stack of Magic comic books in a thrift store. I bought them without a second thought. One day, I watched a @rhysticstudies.bsky.social video about Fallen Empires. Comic books were mentioned. I wondered if any of the ones I had matched what's on screen. And sure enough:

2026 Magic events I'm flying to: - Shoebox - #MCVegas26

I appreciate the layup by FINAL FANTASY's The Earth Crystal into Avatar: The Last Airbender slam-dunking w/ earthbend. Specifically, I'm appreciating that 2025 was the year green borrowed the earth element from red & made a consistent statement on what the earth element in green looks like ✨

Thanks for the laugh, Giovanni Maucere (Superman ASL interpreter), for deciding to be a silly goose (crab) in your exit during the credits instead of the standard fade-away 🤣

Latest thought: If using a celebrity's likeness on the packaging of a product, incurs a fee of X amount, then if that same celebrity was wearing shades instead of their uncovered face, could the fee be less than X, due to their likeness being less likely to be recognized by a potential customer?

I genuinely got confused for a sec when I saw that Hydro-Man was a new card in Marvel Snap. I thought we already got Hydro-Man recently. ...then I realized I was thinking about Magic's Hydro-Man.

The subject of picking high-ticket cards in a draft came up in a non-MTG card game Discord server today, so I searched for a clip of the Modern Masters 2015 GP live-drafted stamped foil Tarmogoyf. Unfortunately, many sources used the term "Goyfgate." Too cringe for me to share in that setting. 😞

I enjoy that the animosity between Mishra and Urza is so central to the theme of the Brothers' War set that it inspired a juxtaposition of a new card riffing off of what otherwise is a lovely flavor of a red effect.

Anybody else shy away from Lavabrink Floodgates as a mana rock option for EDH decks? I dig the card's concept. But I dislike the explanation & disruption cost for the action you perform each upkeep. I wish you got a mini-reward each time. Perhaps placing or removing a counter causes you to scry 1.

First time playing with Avatar cards! Sealed, picked Toph Went 5-3

Retroactive headcanon: The reason why the Powerstone cards that were printed before the Powerstone type existed is that they are not quite up to snuff as they were back during The Brothers' War. They are: - Worn - Fractured - A shard

Solving for representing airbending in MTG when there's "the last airbender" is similar to a problem 25 years ago, with the DBZ TCG. There was a Namekian style (the game had six "colors," one of them is Namekian). Piccolo, like Aang, had to carry much of the load for representing these cards.

What are some of the new formats peeps have come up with and have built a few decks for in the past few years? Last newest format I built decks for was Artisan Commander, I think. Here's what I've heard of for newer formats: - @clovermtg.bsky.social - @pendragonmtg.com What else?

The term "Commander Brackets" is helpful to leverage into using whimsical language for budget ranges for your decks: "Tax Brackets" Is the total dollar value of your deck... ...2 digits? ...a couple hundred? ...several hundred? ...1000+ dollars?

There's bound to be Magic peeps reading this who don't know the following, so I'll share this trivia: Pemmin's Aura is an anagram of "I Am Superman." Why? Because the abilities the Aura grants are the same abilities as Morphling. Morphling's nickname is "Superman."

Was reminded that we still have yet to see a Pemmin legendary creature card in Magic.

Did you know? Scourge of Kher Ridges has the split card Rough // Tumble as its activated abilities.

I was writing into my online calendar while I was thinking about Magic. I meant to write into my calendar "Fire Inspection," but I ended up writing instead "Soulfire Eruption" 🤣

Both Storm of Memories & Seifer Almasy let you cast an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. And when that spell resolves, it's exiled instead of going to the graveyard. Storm of Memories says "a graveyard, exile" while Seifer says "your graveyard, exile" Templating accident or purposeful?

When choosing between MagicCon Las Vegas or MagicCon Atlanta to attend next year, a criterion to consider is what the latest set will be at that time. For Vegas, it's Strixhaven (cool). For Atlanta, it's either Reality Fracture (cool) or Star Trek (not for me). Vegas is less risky in that regard.

I'm planning out Magic: The Gathering events to attend in 2026. Here's what I have written down. Any I'm missing? MagicCon CommandFest CubeCon Shoebox SCG CON Since I'm in Tacoma, I also wanna note any lesser-scale events around Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, and/or Portland.

@ludosgd.bsky.social Most of my cards are in English, so I wanted to thank you for being my Pocket friend, so that I can Wonder Pick Italian cards from you, like this Greninja EX 😊

Peeps in one of my Discord servers were having a discussion after I shared my post there. Quenchable Fire was brought up. Love this card as a barometer for whether we're on the same page for the spirit of color identity. Design intent: monored in Limited/Standard EDH spirit: multicolored identity

Even though many others on social media space have the same position as I do regarding the following topic & have already shared their thoughts; it might help to increase the volume. Even by a tiny bit. My thoughts on EDH & hybrid mana: millingfor53.medium.com/c162649e95d8... @magic.wizards.com

Did you know? If you search Scryfall for which cards that aren't basic lands have 99 printings, you'll get Command Tower. And for which cards have 100+ printings? A sole ring to rule them all.

In honor of Trick's tenure at Wizards, enjoy the first couple minutes of this Walking the Planes episode that, for some reason, pops up in my brain every once in a blue moon, complete with the underscoring sound accompanying it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iL_...