random bits

[cellio]

Now there's an odd failure mode. Tonight I opened a book I bought recently (new) and found that it begins on page 41. Nothing was torn out; it appears to be a binding error. I guess I should have checked sooner (I bought it a couple months ago), but it's a torah commentary on Exodus, which we start this week, so I didn't need it before now. Fortunately, Amazon has an extended return period for books bought late in the year, so they'll exchange it and I don't even have to pay to ship it back. Yay.

Dani has decided to tackle the vast collection of Magic: The Gathering cards (most of which are his, but the older cards are mine). We haven't played in years; I would consider playing again in a simplified world, but they lost me when not only were there 6000 different cards, but they decided that many of the commons needed four different types of art. When I can't easily track what my opponent has in play, I lose interest. I understand that it's worse now; Dani says they are still publishing expansions and making money at it. After 12 or 13 years of this, I wonder how many cards there are now. (For comparison, the basic game, the one I played in the beta edition, had 300 cards. The first, and best, expansion set added, I think, about 75. Things went downhill from there.)

A few links:

These "new rules" might be incorrectly attributed (the reason they're on Snopes), but they sure are funny.

Advice from hindsight (from unspace).

This biscotti recipe sounds easy enough to try (from cookingengineer).

The origins of the great war of 2007 (link from rjlippincott).

Aieee. As tsjafo comments, I wouldn't trust the government with a pill that can alter memories. Granted, they're a long way from erasure, but I still don't trust that sort of technology in the hands of anyone with the power to compel -- in which category I would also place health providers, 'cause they're mostly owned by the insurance companies.

Comments

[dogofjustice.livejournal.com]

Actually, 5-6 years ago the game went back uphill to some extent. Wizards figured out how to keep new expansions at roughly the same power level as the preceding ones. (Also, they stopped the "four different types of art" thing a long long time ago.)

The most commonly played formats only permit ~300-1500 of the most recently printed cards. It isn't difficult to jump back into the game. Of course, the bad news is that most of the cards you can acquire now will be nearly unusuable 2 years from now since they won't be legal in any commonly sanctioned format except "Extended".

[cellio]

Thanks for this information. I think I stopped playing around '96 or so, so I missed those improvements.

Keeping the playable set small is good; planned obsolescence, well, keeps Wizards in business. :-) I never did much tournament play anyway, so I suppose a gaming group could set its own rules to keep the set of cards (and money spent) within whatever parameters it chose.