u/Phitt77

Found this site by accident. It's apparently a fan project that allows you to play with Old School 93/94 decks against an AI opponent or a real opponent and it looks like MTG Arena. I played a few games and just like in Forge the AI is pretty dumb, but it looks pretty cool and I thought people here might be interested in it.

I've been to Zanzibar with my family for two weeks in July and since I asked some questions beforehand in this sub I thought it would be a good idea to answer all the questions I had.

1. Visa. I wasn't sure whether you could reliably get a visa on arrival, but people here told me it's no problem and they were right. I applied for a visa online months before the vacation anyway and paid $50 for it and this was a total scam. Thankfully I only did it for myself to see how it goes and not for our whole family (which would have cost us $200). I filled out the form on the official government website and paid the $50 afterwards, but nothing ever came out of it. I checked on the site with my transaction ID after a few weeks and I was told I needed to send confirmation of my payment even though I paid by using the official government website. I sent them the confirmation to the provided email twice anyway, but they never replied. I sent them another email urging them to reply, but nope, no one ever answered. This is such a scam and really embarrassing for Tanzania. I could have called the embassy by phone, but it was 'only' $50 so eventually I called it a day. I strongly advise against applying for a visa online if you don't want to be scammed out of your money. Visa on arrival is possible and what most tourists do, no one gets rejected (at least if you are a normal tourist) and it doesn't take much longer than standing in line with a visa. It costs the same as well.
2. Other fees. I knew you had to pay $50 per person for the mandatory travel insurance, which we did beforehand and which, unlike the visa, worked flawlessly online. You can still buy the insurance at the airport, but in this case you save yourself a few minutes if you already have it. Another fee I did not know about was the 'tourist fee' (can't remember the proper name for it), which is $5 per person per day for 4 and 5 star hotels - it's $2-$4 for lower categories. So for us that was another $280 on top of the $200 for the (useless) insurance and the $200 (in our case $250) for the visas. They really want your money over there. This left a bitter taste in my mouth and honestly doesn't feel very welcoming, especially since you can't really see what the money is used for.
3. Renting a car and driving around with it. I rented a car from a local lender for 10 days. To drive on Zanzibar you need an international driving license and a local driving permit. Getting the driving permit was no problem as the lender took care of that for me, all I had to do was to send him a picture of my passport and driving license one day in advance. The permit costs $15. Driving around on Zanzibar was no problem. It is quite a bit different from Europe obviously, but I never felt unsafe. The streets are in bad condition and they have a lot of crazy high speed bumps placed randomly near villages. You really need to slow down to walking speed or they will destroy your car and if you think about renting a sports car...just don't, lol (there are no sports cars on Zanzibar of course). There are also a lot of people walking on the street (there are no pedestrian walkways) at all times of day or night, plus some random animals like goats or cattle. Almost no one has a private car so most people walk or use public transportation. But this is no problem as you can't drive fast anyway - outside of villages I never drove faster than ~60 kilometres per hour and inside villages I usually slowed down to 30 km/h. The only place I didn't drive to myself was Stone Town as during rush hour it's absolute chaos. I think it would be possible to drive there as well, but we just booked a tour with a guide to go there without getting stressed. One other thing I was afraid of was the police as some people wrote they were scammed out of money or threatened by the police. We were checked by the police a few times, but they were always friendly and only one of them actually wanted to see my driving license and permit. The others asked for some 'support'. At first I thought they meant money, but no, they asked for some water or something to eat! And they only kindly asked for it and didn't demand it, so we didn't feel threatened. We gave them a bottle of water if we had a spare one in the car.
4. Poverty. I already read that people in Zanzibar are pretty poor, but we were still a bit shocked when we got there. I've been a lot to south-east Asia, Egypt and some other countries with a lower living standard than Germany (where we come from) but Zanzibar is something else. We visited two villages and people live in small huts built from mud or in very basic concrete houses that look like ruins by European standards. There is trash everywhere. They often have no electricity (or only limited to a few hours per day) and no running water either. They have a well in the middle of the village where they get semi-clean water from. It's really a bit like it used to be in the middle ages in Europe. It feels a bit odd to go there for a luxury vacation and enjoy your cocktail at the pool when a few hundred metres away people live like that. Our hotel also had high walls with broken glass on top of the walls, plus a security team with ~10 people constantly patrolling the area. The people we met were all very friendly and we never felt unsafe while we were roaming the island, but I guess they have these measures in place for a reason.
5. The beach. I read a lot about annoying beach vendors and that you can't go to the beach without getting harassed constantly. The better hotels like the one we stayed in have their own secluded beach zone where only hotel guests are allowed, but the beach itself is free to use for anyone. And while it's true that people walk up to you to sell you something it's not as bad as I feared it would be. At our beach (on the east coast north of Kiwengwa) there were only relatively few people and eventually you know all of them. If you make it clear that you don't want to buy anything they leave you alone. And sometimes there wasn't even anyone, especially during afternoon/evening. For example I built a sand castle with my daughter for an hour and I could do that without anyone walking up to me even though a few people were passing by. If you swim no one is screaming at you either. I don't know how bad it is on other beaches as our hotel beach was the only one we've been to. The only thing you absolutely can't do is a reef tour during low tide as people will just come to you and guide you, even if you want to go alone. And of course they will ask for money after the tour you didn't ask for.
6. Activities. We like to see something during our vacations so we were looking for things we could do. There are a lot of standard tourists tours, but since we had a car we did a lot of it by ourselves. We visited a spice farm, a rural village, a cave, a small zoo, had a guided tour through Stone Town and we did a one day Safari to Mikumi national park. All of it was a lot of fun, if you want any specific informations you can ask.
7. Prices. Zanzibar is expensive for a country that is so poor. They really want the tourist money and they're not shy about it. Compared to Indonesia, Thailand or Malaysia prices for tours and entry fees are very high. Entry to the small Kiwengwa cave cost ~$5 per person. Entry to the little zoo (with just a few animals, not comparable to a 'real' zoo) cost $10. The Stone Town tour cost $150. And so on. I compared that to what we paid during our last few vacations in Indonesia/Bali or Thailand and the difference is huge. These countries certainly have a higher living standard than Zanzibar, yet prices for everything were way, way lower. The people in Zanzibar need the money so it felt like doing charity, but I still felt ripped off a lot of times. When we walked through the reef the guy who showed us everything (without us asking him to do it of course) was asking for $25 for half an hour of work! I know you're supposed to negotiate and we didn't end up paying that much, but it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth if everyone constantly wants to rip you off.

But overall it was a nice vacation. I've never been to sub-Saharan Africa before and I'm glad I have seen it.

https://preview.redd.it/3q8qv51i3ehh1.jpg?width=1344&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce1e23f21e68ed5712c5fdcd44133627c469ad10

It's time for This or That Tuesday. I will show you two or more cards with similar effects and power level and you tell me which one you'd pick if all of them were in a pack and/or which one you'd run in a typical old border cube. I try to avoid cards that need strong synergies to be good since you don't get any context in form of a specific cube, but for the sake of this thread just assume you have a typical old border cube that runs all of the best pre-Mirrodin old border cards, but no overpowered retro frame cards.

Today we'll talk about two lesser known green creatures - Simian Grunts and Hunting Moa. Both cost 2G with an echo cost and both can do something worthwhile for you even if you don't pay the echo cost. I think they're both solid B tier creatures that can do work even in higher powered cubes. Which one is your favourite and why?

Bonus question: What's your favourite old border 3 drop (can be any card, not just creatures) you like to ramp into with a mana dork on turn 2?