Deck link

In today's exercise we fill a [[Whtz, the Bibliophile]] deck with lands, [[Persistent Petitioner]]s and [[Battle of Wits]]. And a couple of "combo" cards.

Turn by turn:

1. Land
2. Land + Persistent Petitioner
3. Land + Whtz
4. Land + 2x Persistent Petitioner
5. Land + 2x Persistent Petitioner
6. Land + 3x Persistent Petitioner
7. Land + 2x Persistent Petitioner
8. Land + Persistent Petitioner
9. Land + Persistent Petitioner + [[Sevinne's Reclamation]] or [[Skyway Robber]]
10. Land + use previous recursion to bring [[Rescue Skiff]], into Battle of Wits and finally [[Echo of Eons]] to shuffle
11. Win

See tables for how the card counts go. Feel free to ask any questions!

In the spirit of being for all kinds of TCGs the subreddit icon was updated to include the most commonly asked TCG card backs.

Let us know what you think and whether we should revert!

EDIT: The title is accidentally bait-y. Almost all features are old-ish. Sorry about that.

A user asked about this card, which turned out to be a fake. I wasn't able to get a good consensus at r/Printing (this post) but it looks like this was not printed with an inkjet, which is what counterfeiters have traditionally used. Ergo the reason I'm bringing this up is because the card has some features that are worth highlighting.

Moving from top to bottom, left to right:

Stamp

1. The transition from the black border to the white middle border is not clean. The transition phase is ever so slightly full of black and coloured ink as opposed to being crisp.
2. The stamp isn't sunken deep enough. You can see a shadow on the right hand side of the stamp.
3. It's hard to see from this image but the WIZARDS WIZARDS WIZARDS microtext is actually present. The font seems to be too large compared to the linked reference, though.
4. The edge of the stamp is not clean cut, but rather a bit "frayed" which is entirely normal, but the stamping job is a bit sloppy considering the amount of dings in the edge.
5. I cannot see the brick pattern (bad sign) but I can see some diagonal lines in some parts of the stamp. EDIT: Another member, u/GhostCheese pointed out the brick pattern is indeed there. I just didn't catch it, sorry.

'T' and 'h'

1. The borders are bumpy or, rather, bubbly as pointed out by u/GhostCheese. This means that the black layer was probably printed last in a separate pass, which is correct. The bumps are misaligned horizontally as seen in the left and right side of the 'T'. Vertically the alignment is close to real because I'm counting 5+1 bumps at the bottom of the 'T' stem. They're only slightly blurry.
2. The 'h' is missing the distinctive three dots in the middle.
3. The ink running within the 'T' is incorrectly oriented but it's going, which is relatively new. OP's gradient runs from South-West to North-East but on a real card the gradient is the opposite. The angle itself (15 degrees) is pretty much spot on, though.

Mana symbol

1. Nothing remarkable about the mana symbol. The black layer was printed last, which means most transitions are pretty clean.
2. The grey transition from the round symbol to the background is continuous. It actually looks quite convincing.

Green dot

Oh boy.

1. The black border is solid.
2. There are bumps on the correct sides (top and left) but also on right and bottom. This is just a matter of alignment to get right.
3. Gradients run albeit there is a bit much ink around the yellow area which is also supposed to have a somewhat "bald" white spot with only small yellow ink dots. Here that area isn't crisp, it's fuzzy because there's too much ink.
4. The four L-shaped red specks are missing as expected.
5. Just like previously the cyan layer is running mirrored which causes the green gradient also to run mirrored.

Paintbrush

1. The black part in the middle is too small resulting in thick inkless (white) parts.

Rosette

1. Layers (CMYK) have been printed in separate passes, which is rare for a fake.
2. The layers seem to consist of ink dots which rules out most [usages] of inkjets.
3. The rosette is all wrong, though. The cyan layer is running mirrored and looks like every other layer is also shifted by a random angle - they all seem to run at 15 degrees. Except in some parts.
4. All ink dots are printed on top of each other it seems. This is not offset printing like a real card would have.
5. Pass order is not YMCK (real card). Here it seems like YCMK order was used, or something that puts cyan behind magenta.

All in all we can safely label this as a fake as it doesn't pass the simplest of tests.

Image 1: suspect.

Image 2: known industrial cmyk offset printer.

Original diagram by u/Biquasquibrisance.

Image 1 shows the print layer CMYK offsets (angles).

Image 2 shows an actual reconstruction of each layer alignment from the Green Dot & its surroundings.

Image 3 shows the labels of each colour + angles. This is probably a lower quality picture, use image 2 to study in higher resolution. I've pointed out the locations I used for each alignment.

Make sure your image is perfectly straight. The way you deconstruct the rosette is as follows:

1. Start with black (K). It's very easy to notice and is at a 45 degree angle. If your image isn't perfectly straight you can use this as a guide to straighten it. This 45 degree angle produces a pattern at 0 degrees, too, which in turn explains the sparse "bumps" on the 'T' and the dots in the middle of the 'h' we use to test card backs.
2. Use the yellow (Y) dots in the middle of the Green Dot with no other colour to align the yellow layer at 0 degrees.
3. Use the green ink dots in the middle of the Green Dot to align the cyan (C) layer to 15 degrees. There are no real good pure cyan ink to be found but the yellow + cyan layers will produce green. This by the way gives the rosette it's distinct 15 degrees slanted green gradient in the Green Dot.
4. Guess where the magenta (M) ink layer could be. The orange blotches are probably a guide but it's a bit of guesswork. The magenta layer is really, really hard to find from the brown background colour because it blends with other colours so much. It should be at a 75 degrees angle but it's probably more visible in red coloured cards on the front. I didn't try this.

If you learn the offset angles by heart it's possible to just glance at the rosette (with a loupe...) anywhere on a non-solid black part of a card and tell whether it was printed in layers with a CMYK-capable printing machine, each layer separately, with the correct alignments, and correct print files that had the precision to produce this pattern.

The cEDH League is Back!

• WHAT: The r/CompetitiveEDH's cEDH Discord League
• WHERE: discord.gg/cedh - games on https://cockatrice.github.io/
• WHEN: Sunday 26 July - Sunday 19 September (depending on your timezone)

Please welcome Season 4 of the league!

To get started head on over to discord.gg/cedh #⁠⁠game-rules channel and pick up the "League Player" role! You'll get access to our cEDH league category with all the appropriate channels. Our league will once again use our cEDH league bot, coded by isleep2late with the help of Slinky and the cEDH Bot Testing crew, to track games over the course of the season.

You'll gain and lose Elo-ranks after recording games and see where you're placed among the leader board anytime. Feel free to share your thoughts on the feedback form anytime throughout the league's duration! We'll be using the Cockatrice software for ultimate competitive integrity.

Wishing to keep all games fair for everyone. If any issues arise in-game, you'll be able to download the automatic replay for us to investigate. Of course, we're looking to reward those that work hard and play well. Those at the top of the leader board at the end of this league can look forward the following prizes.

Prizes:

1st Place

• A Tempest [[Intuition]] ($$$!) provided by Madison
• The colourful custom role League Conqueror

2nd - 4th Place

• $70 courtesy of isleep2late and r∅Gx
• The colourful custom role League Ace

5th - 8th Place

• $45 courtesy of isleep2late and r∅Gx

Additionally, we will be giving away five free Proxy Printery proxy decks at random to eligible players outside of the top 8! Extra special thanks go to isleep2late, r∅Gx, and Proxy Printery.app!

This is the set Super Street Sensation, #8448 (also known as Super Car). It does not have Ackermann steering. Ackermann steering requires a steering arm with an offset inwards, such as the part in image 3.

Image 1: Screenshot from the manual showing the double wishbone.

Image 2: The original part used. (32186)

Image 3: A replacement I thought about using. (2737)

Image 4: What happens when one uses the 2737 part instead of the original steering arm. There is nothing that would align with the holes. Mind you that the suspension comes easily in the way, too. The red outline is just a mock liftarm part showcasing the problem.

Image 5: Another replacement I could use. (15460)

There aren't really other 3 high towball options to use and any 4 or 5 high pieces mess up the wishbone geometry pretty badly.

Any ideas?

Hi,

This is a spite play post

I've been around for 2 years as the top mod. The sub grew from 40k members to 600k users in that timespan - that's an order of magnitude. I've been here trying to make your lives easier and I like to think I've done a decent job. At least you've been telling me nice things about my style and I appreciate that.

Now it's Reddit's turn to make things my life harder

Reddit recently rolled out an age check for EU-based members. Non-age verified redditors cannot view mature content. Any post made under the "NSFW" tag, any NSFW subreddit and any profile with even a single NSFW contribution is off-limits to me. I get the pictured pop-up and it's making my ability to tell bad actors from good contributors just that much harder when I'm unable to view a user's profile (at all). It's not like they hide the mature content, I just can't access the profile. Normally I'd be able to see +-30 days of the user's all contributions (even if their profile is curated) which Reddit thinks is a good idea "for moderation [purposes]". Apparently if they've ever posted a picture of a rotten tomato on a food sub with the NSFW tag enabled I need to be procted from that. Then it's not longer a good idea to show any of the other contributions.

On top of this Reddit is hiding my own content tagged as "NSFW" from ... me. If I post on r/bugs (the subreddit where you're supposed to report bugs with the platform) saying "Hey, I cannot view my own NSFW posts" I will be unable to see it. Ask me how I know.

I hope you see why this could be a problem.

My alternatives are:

1. Age verify by sending a selfie or a government ID (passport) photo to Persona, the 3rd party service that had privacy issues and was subsequently ditched by Discord.
2. Ask my fellow mods to address the items/members I cannot access. It's many a member. Not all of you/them are bad actors.
3. Quit.

I chose the third option. I love you all but killing the 3rd party API access, introducing pointless AI tools & mandatory filters, then killing the API self-serve tool and now hiding some essentials is taking a toll on me. There's no drama in the mod team and nothing wrong with you - purely a Reddit issue. I will be around for a few days to address some loose ends but then it'll be time to log out, uninstall the app and turn the lights off.

I want to thank you all for the wonderful times we had. 💜

Wish the remaining team good luck and be supportive of them!

Feel free to chat with me while I'm still around. Just leave a comment! :)

I saw it in a dream

Inspired by: https://www.reddit.com/r/mtg/s/vum8CDaty4

This isn't pertaining to any particular era or meta but the card showcases that colour's most iconic effect and does it so in a recognisable way.

"Best, barely unplayable" means that the card always has a slightly better alternative that costs a little less for this effect or it has a similarly costed alternative with upsides.

For white I picked [[Glorious Anthem]]. White is known for tokens, Auras, small creatures, protective spells, Vigilance, Angels and - my pick - static effects granting upsides to creatures. Sure, [[Healing Salve]] is probably the most useless and widely recognised protection spell but I wanted to include a card that actually does something. The overarching theme seems to be "be smol, get stronk" and I felt like Glorious Anthem fit that bill best.

For blue I picked [[Divination]]. Blue is hands down best known for drawing cards so the choice is obvious. Divination is barely unplayable and very iconic so I think it represents blue's domain best. The other very strong contender is [[Cancel]] as the best unplayable counterspell but between the two cards that reference drawing outnumber cards that counter spells.

For black I picked [[Murder]]. Black is known for its generic ability to "kill" as in get rid of a creature. The choice is between self-sacrifice, recursion/reanimation, target creature removal, Demons, and life loss as a resource. [[Painful Lesson]] is a card that's outside of getting rid of a creature but it's not very iconic. All its siblings that are iconic are very efficient and as such they don't qualify. [[Reassembling Skeleton]] is iconic and embodies the reanimation side of black but ultimately I felt like Murder has to happen before reanimation.

For red I picked [[Lightning Strike]]. While not the most iconic card it does what red is best known for: direct damage. A more iconic contender would have been [[Lava Axe]] but Lightning Strike is mechanically very close to [[Lightning Bolt]], the pinnacle of red power.

For green I picked [[Colossal Dreadmaw]]. Meme. Hehe. But it's also a (slightly overcosted) Trample creature, which is what green does best. Having a chonker of an attacker is how green applies pressure. Pump spells such as [[Giant Growth]], or recursion such as [[Regrowth]] could have worked, too. (Obviously those two are "good" cards so they wouldn't qualify.) I just felt like it should be a creature.

What would you pick? Criteria: you wouldn't play it competitively because it has a better alternative but it embodies that colour's philosophy.

Hi,

Starting as of ~yesterday many Magic: The Gathering Discord servers were hit by bots that DM innocuous looking links on Discord. In reality those links don't lead to the place they're supposed to - this is called domain masking. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_masking The scammer's link hijacks your accounts and they lock you out of them.

How it works:

1. An account DMs you. This can even be a trusted friend, because they may have already fallen victim to this scam.
2. The DMs are mostly harmless but at some point they prompt you to "see their new project" which has thus far been mostly Steam links but I suspect it could be anything from a blog post to a Soundcloud link.
3. The link is masked. On Discord you [put the link text here](https://url-goes-here.lol) and the end result is just an ordinary looking link. The confusion arises from "put the link text here" looking like another website.
4. You open the link. Discord will prompt you (RE: see post image) to confirm you want to go to this site. Please pay attention as this is your last line of defense. If you "Go Back" nothing bad has happened.
5. The link leads to a script that hijacks your active sessions on your browser. All of them. If you have your Google account signed in, they get it. If you're on Reddit, they get it. No amount of 2FA will prevent this step, because the scammer isn't stealing your credentials, they're stealing you existing on the Internet. Difference is between someone stealing your car keys, breaking in and driving off in your car versus them kicking you out of the car in red lights and driving off while the car was already running.
6. The prompt asks you to authorise your Discord to the malicious app. Don't do it. This is the way they gain access to your session.
7. Once they have access to your sessions they'll quickly use those to change as many credentials as they can - ultimately locking you out of your accounts.

Please, please be really careful on the Internet.

---

A more technical and comprehensive explanation of session hijacking: https://www.pingidentity.com/en/resources/blog/post/session-hijacking.html

Image 1:

My profile via Android while logged in. Settings say my profile is "curated" to show 21 communities.

Image 2:

My profile via Desktop Web and Mobile Web while in incognito mode (not logged in). Blocked by "network security".

Image 3:

My profile via Desktop Web while logged in. Everything is hidden.

Image 4:

Logged into my other account via another Chrome browser profile. Everything is visible, including communities I've "curated" / hidden.

Image 5:

I am not suspended or restricted.

------------------------

What on Earth is going on?

I pre-emptively took a screenshot of my post before submitting it. I cannot see the post in the picture. It's not visible on the feed or in my profile while I'm logged in.