Category: MTG

Edgelords of Eternity

May 29, 2026

Today I caught up with Adam for the first in a two-day series of playing Magic using all 66 packs in these boxes:

Today we opened the Edge of Eternities box, and it took us about 6 hours to play 7 games with progressively more complex decks as we added more and more packs to our pools.

It’s a fun set with complex cards. I played a black/white deck in each round, where Adam played black/white, then red/green then blue.

I was the victor today, winning two of the three rounds. I can’t take full credit for this: I got very lucky with some of my boosters and pulled some very strong cards. Many games were close too, and the last one in particular (shown in the above pics) had a crazy board state at the end.

As much fun as Edge of Eternities was I’m looking forward to see how the Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sets play when we continue on Monday!

Bloomburrow Prerelease

July 29, 2024

On Saturday I attended the prerelease for the new Magic The Gathering set called Bloomburrow. This was my first prerelease in a decade.

The event was held at a gaming center opened by my local game shop back during the pandemic. I’d never been and was surprised by how large and well equipped it was (it even has a cafe serving hot food)! At first I was a bit taken aback by how many people were there, but then I realized there would be simultaneous Lorcana and Warhammer 40k events being held. Only 12 people showed up for the Bloomburrow prerelease, which seemed very low for such a popular set. The events have become far less competitive than when I played years ago, with only three rounds and prizes of a pack a round for the winners. (So the most you could win was three packs.)

The above was my bonus card, and he’s very strong in the right deck. Alas I couldn’t make him work with the cards in my packs, and indeed it was difficult at first to decide what sort of deck to make. In the end I went with a mostly red/white deck with a tiny splash of blue (since I had two counterspells) with which I faced my first opponent.

My first opponent was inexperienced and demonstrated some quirks of a new player, but had a very strong deck for a prerelease. It was green/white, heavy on rabbits and fliers, and also not sparse with land/card draw. We played two games, both of which went too long since he took forever to make his plays, and both of which could have ended quicker if he had been bolder with his attacks. In fact in the second game, after three turns of him not triggering an obvious win condition, I showed him how he could have already won (which he admitted he had not noticed). He won both games, but he could have won them much faster! (I learned at the end he would go on and win all three of his rounds.)

My second opponent played blue/green/black, although I never saw him actually cast a black spell. His deck wasn’t as strong as the first guy, but it was very irritating with a lot of stuns, bounces and evasive attackers. The games were very short, and he beat me 2-0 handily in only about 15 minutes. Some of this was my poor land draw, but it was also the fact he was obviously an experienced limited player and knew how to build a winning deck from sealed packs. Before facing him I had removed the (three) blue cards from my deck, and he took a look and made suggestions for minute (two cards) further refinements which I gladly adopted.

The above was the deck I faced my final opponent with (which differs from my initial deck by only 5 cards). He was very inexperienced – this was his first prerelease and he’d only been playing for two weeks – and he played unsleeved! I didn’t get much of a feel for his (white/blue) deck since I beat him very quickly in both of our games.

And thus I won a single pack 🙂

Every opponent had asked if I was interested in trading away my legendary mouse card (Mabel) and afterwards I went back to the first guy to see what he had. As it turns out he was friends with my third opponent and between them and their two other friends I traded essentially my entire card pool for their squirrel and basic land cards. They definitely got the advantage due to value (I had three mythics) but I was happy because I only wanted the cards they gave me.

My thoughts on the set: it’s a lot of fun to play although very token-heavy, and the art is beautiful. I think it lives up to the hype. As for the prerelease itself I enjoyed it, but definitely found myself getting tired after four hours. Will I go to the next set release event? As of right now, that’s undecided.

Japan Pickups: The Weird Stuff

June 21, 2024

I love finding unusual and unexpected things in Japan, and this post shows off a few of them.

This model kit was extremely inexpensive (about $8) and the box is so lightweight I imagine the kit itself is tiny and has very few pieces. But look at it: a kappa! Of course I was going to buy this! And since it’s glow-in-the-dark, it won’t even matter if I don’t paint it. I’ll make this one day and blog it when I do.

In the game center post I did while I was in Japan I showed a photo of Friday The 13th metal rings in a gacha, and as weird as those were they were somewhat common and I saw them in many machines. One day, in a dingy alley in Akihabara, I found another metal ring gacha, only this time it was Star Wars. Here’s the five rings it contained:

This was the only one of these machines I encountered the entire trip, and when I found it there was only one single item remaining in the machine. Of course I bought it, and I think you can guess which one I wanted. Here’s what I got:

It seems the gods of luck were smiling on me that day 🙂

The above is a Magic The Gathering Japanese promo sticker from 2023. It seems these were randomly given to players who played in official events (in Japan) last year although even the official Hasbro announcement only lists 12 stickers (not including the capybara) but the store I purchased it from had many more. It’s a cute and unusual MtG mystery item!

I bought this book at a wonderful bookstore in Akiba, and it’s an encyclopedia of legendary and influential RPGs from the early days of computer games.

This is an incredible book, full of information and details about many games I hold dear, and I’ll be reading this one using my phone translator!

What I particularly love is that it includes many games we didn’t get in the west, such as Seal of Haja for the PC-88 (shown above). This book was also the first in a set of three, and I already regret not picking up the other two 🙂

Here’s another curiosity: a wafer biscuit with ‘chocolate sticker’ that expired 8 years ago and that I paid about $5 for. The packaging will suggest why I bought this, and if you need a further hint you can re-read this post from last year. Suffice to say this will be opened and have its own blog post soon enough…

And last but certainly not least, we have the above article of jewelry. At first it looks like a standard crucifix, but looking closer we see it is actually:

A crucified Ultraman! At first glance this may seem unforgivably blasphemous, but be mindful that this is from a different culture, and the Japanese idea of crucifixion (which was a common method of execution almost into the 20th century) isn’t as singular as it is in the west.

This piece of jewelry is actually in reference to a famous scene in episode 13 of Ultraman Ace, from 1972, where several Ultras were caught and crucified by an alien:

This had not been the first time crucifixion was shown in an Ultraman series, but to my knowledge it was the last. (As an aside you could probably write an academic paper on the use of crucifixion in many different tokusatsu shows up to and including Evangelion.)

A motley and weird collection of pickups then. Which of these would you have purchased?

Robot Claw