Rosalia Rambles

Tag: Card Games

  • Redundancy Review: Day 81 & 82, “Improvisin’, Helldivin’, and Survivin’”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning fixers and repairers, welcome to a double feature for Day 81 & 82 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Did I miss a day out of my commitment for writing every day before my convention trip? Yes I did. Do I have a good reason for it? Yes I do.

    I have been enjoying myself and relaxing. I had a friend over for a roast dinner yesterday which took up a lot of my energy in terms of preparation and then I played a lot of Helldivers 2 to continue unlocking stuff from the Halo warbond.

    That said, I did make a marginal improvement to Rambles as a whole by upgrading the top navigation bar: adding in a dedicated Redundancy Review button to navigate to all of these articles, and adding in both my fiction & commissions right at the top bar to advertise that part of the website.

    Taking several factors into consideration, the primary factor of which is my rent going up by £40 at the start of October, I definitely want to put more effort into advertising the fact I am available for writing commissions or quality assurance contracts. Part of me realises that returning to the stable corporate structure might not be in my foreseeable future, and as much as the freelance life unsettles me a little bit; there are a fair few benefits that come with it as well.

    Specifically, freelancing gives me a higher chance of remaining remote in my work lifestyle, which I would very much like to do for the foreseeable, both for personal preference and to help try to maintain the idea of remote work becoming the norm in the coming years.

    For those who might not be aware, I consider myself a “remote work advocate”, to put it in LinkedIn speech. I believe remote work is the ideal way for people to work and whilst there are definitely going to be a fair few exceptions within that statement, I feel remote work needs to be more widely adopted across different industries – especially in the increasingly volatile tech industry.

    I see a lot of techbros talk against remote work, saying that nothing beats the in-person energy of experimentation and bouncing ideas off of each other… and to some extent, I agree.

    Brainstorming ideas in-person can lead to more off-the-cuff suggestions, but I feel it should skew more towards regular team days that focus on both work and relaxation. Gather people together for meetings where they can discuss how things have gone in recent months, where improvements can be made, and then follow it up with an evening of relaxation together, either going out for a meal or engaging in an activity.

    Remote work leads to healthier people and higher productivity. At least in my case, the fact I am working in my own space without the distraction of people talking to me or coming by my desk for a chat leads to me getting my work done a lot quicker, especially when taking into consideration that one of my (many) neuroses is that I really struggle to work when I am aware of someone looking over my shoulder or perceiving my work in any way.

    I am working, you do not need to stand over my shoulder and assure yourself that I am doing so. It will get done, so leave me alone and let me work…

    …god help me if I end up getting an in-person role in the future, in my now almost five-year career as a QA I have worked a grand total of seven days in an in-person setting, and of those seven days only three of them could be classed as actually doing my job since one of them was getting to the office for the first time and being toured round with the remaining three being in-person meetings where I spent more time commuting than I actually did contributing.

    It would be one hell of a socialisation experiment, but ultimately, even if I am not the most social person at work, I still get the job done.

    Want to hire me and watch me prove that? Get in touch! Quality assurance, fiction writing, technical writing? I will do it all and am more than happy to work within your budget to find a solution that benefits both of us.

    Time to head into the review, and considering a well-known card game accessory manufacturer is currently going through a lot of bad publicity due to stupid decisions regarding AI usage and Harry Potter licensing deals, I think it will be good to review a deck box from what is quickly becoming my favourite manufacturer.

    An aside, fuck you Ultimate Guard. Your Katana sleeves were actually some of the best on the market but I cannot in good conscious support you given the decisions you have made over the past weeks.

    Anyway, here is the Gamegenic Squire Plus 100+ XL Deck Box, in the Teal/Pink colour scheme because the trans vibes must be immaculate.

    I am not entirely sure when this particular deck box was released, but I definitely think it was at least in the last year or so, and if we go by how little stock of these exist within UK stores currently, it is reasonable to assume they are quite popular – a sentiment I fully understand now that I have my hands on one.

    The headline feature of the Squire Plus over the regular Squire is the addition of the transparent hard plastic card case that can store a single standard-sized trading card. This is specifically designed around the immensely popular Magic: the Gathering format “Commander”, which features a single card chosen to be your commander.

    It presents an extremely novel solution to the eternal problem that many Magic: the Gathering players face: remembering what deck is stored in what box. With your commander displayed prominently on the outside of the deck box, it not only allows for finding the deck easier but it also allows your decks to become display pieces themselves, proudly showing off your favourite creations on your shelf.

    Additionally, the magnets on the lid of the deck box are extremely discrete compared to other magnetic deck boxes I own, barely being visible on the box or the lid itself leading to a very slim look when all put together.

    The MSRP of these deck boxes is listed at $27.99, which converts to roughly £20.78 as of time of writing. I got this a little cheaper than that from chaoscards.co.uk (not sponsored, but a big fan) at £17.95, which I consider a more than worth it price point for the quality you get in exchange.

    Now to figure out which deck I want to put in this thing.

    That will do it for today, thank you for reading this double feature of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you have had a very good weekend with plenty of relaxation, and that the Monday blues do not get to you too much tomorrow.

    For more information on the Gamegenic Squire Plus, visit the product page here: SQUIRE PLUS 100+ XL CONVERTIBLE – Gamegenic

  • Redundancy Review: Day 63, “Let It All Out”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning sobbers and weepers, welcome to Day 63 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Last night I had a good long cry, lasting about three-quarters of an hour, and it was really needed. For some reason (possibly estrogen-related), my emotions flared up and I found myself wanting to cry over seemingly nothing, the main trigger point that finally set it all off being a Youtube short of a cute guinea pig wheeking loudly – animal videos tend to set my emotions off regardless, but very rarely do they make me want to cry.

    And I just… let it all out. First time in a long while that I have had a good cry, and even though I am paying for it this morning, it was something I needed.

    Part of the reason is definitely lingering anxiety around the convention I am going to soon. It has been almost six years since my last convention experience and I am feeling exceptionally nervous about both putting myself out there, cosplaying properly for the first time in a good few years, and trying to make friends/be social within a community I have been a quiet participant in for many years.

    Additionally, despite the fact I feel I am starting to heal from my redundancy, there is still some lingering trauma from everything that went down that seemed to be gnawing at the back of my mind during my emotional moment.

    I keep telling myself that I am still here, despite everything I have gone through and continue to go through, holding on to my continued existence as a reminder that I am extremely lucky in a very unkind world. My brother once told me that I “had the confidence to sail into the storm, and you have what it takes to make it out of it” – he specifically said that in reference to the fact I came out as trans, but it is something that sticks with me all the same.

    It is hard to exist as a trans person in today’s world full stop, but there is a certain pain that comes from being a trans person in the UK, especially when a supposedly left-wing government got voted in on the promise of “do not be as shit as the Tories” have specifically shat on me and people like me harder than they ever did.

    But I will make an effort to still be here, and still be myself.

    I will not be erased.

    I will not be silent.

    Death before detransition.

    I still have stories to tell, and even if it is taking a long-ass time to tell them, they will be told. Both for myself, and for whoever needs them.

    Feels kind of weird to pivot from such an absolute statement into the positivity of Hololive Tuesday, but… Happy Hololive Tuesday everyone! I am extremely excited for today’s review as it combines my love of VTubers and my love of card games as I review the Tokino Sora and AZKi Starter Deck for the Official Hololive Card Game English release.

    I bought two starter decks, one from TokyoToys in Glasgow when I visited, and another from The Gamers’ Emporium in Swansea on delivery, the latter of which was nice enough to send me a tournament promo pack as part of my order, thanks for that!

    I have laid out the majority of the contents on the included paper playmat, but to give a rundown, here is everything that is included in the box:

    • Two “oshi Holomem” cards in the form of Tokino Sora and AZKi
    • One 50-card preconstructed main deck
    • One 20-card preconstructed “cheer” deck, consisting of white and green cheers
    • 1 quick manual rules sheet
    • 1 paper playmat with marked zones for cards
    • 1 cardboard sheet containing a selection of damage counters and a “SP Oshi Skill” counter

    The box’s contents allow you to take everything out and play right away, with a surprisingly smooth first time play experience when following the included quick manual. 

    When my partner and I did a starting game both using the product we only had to clarify one rule using a Youtube video, after which the flow of the game became rather clear to us – though this comes with a small disclaimer that I have been playing card games regularly for around a decade now, meaning I can adapt to new games easier than most.

    For a brief explainer of how the game works:

    • You have your “oshi Holomem” who acts as the face of the deck, determining your health and carrying two special abilities: one you can use once each turn, and one that can be used once per game
    • You have a deck made up of “Debut”, “1st”, “2nd”, and “Spot” holomems along with support cards.
    • “Debut” holomems act like Basic Pokemon from the Pokemon TCG, being able to be placed directly on your “stage”, or bench to further borrow Pokemon terminology
    • Whilst on your bench, you can place down “1st” or “2nd” holomems to “bloom”/evolve your holomems into more powerful cards
    • “Cheers” act similarly to energy in Pokemon, being attached to your holomems as part of a “cheer phase” and being used to activate “Arts”/moves
    • You have a “center position” holomem who stays on the field until destroyed or swapped out, and a “collab position” holomem who stays on the field for a turn before returning to the bench to “rest”
    • The game ends when a player’s life is reduced to zero, when a player has no holomems on their stage, or if they cannot draw a card from their deck due to it being empty

    A lot of standard TCG rules and terminology, but given a Hololive flavour. I often describe it as Magic: the Gathering Commander format crossed over with Pokemon, which is possibly why I enjoyed it so much. The game definitely takes some amount of time to play through one round, which is why the current official tournament format is only Best-of-1.

    The card quality is fantastic, feeling solidly constructed especially compared to how modern Magic cards currently feel, with the included oshi holomem cards having texture applied to their foils, a common technique in most card games but a very pleasant inclusion for a starter product.

    I also have to admit that whilst I own significantly superior playmats that I will likely be using in future; I definitely have a soft spot for the included paper playmat. It reminds me too much of the old paper playmat you would get in old Yu-Gi-Oh starter products and tickles a nostalgic part of my brain in a weird way.

    As mentioned, the quick manual was actually rather intuitive for doing a first game, my only issue coming in the form of the explanation of the cheer phase. In the manual it reads:

    “Turn the top card of the cheer deck face up, and send it to your holomem on stage.”

    This reads pretty simply, but it caused the issue for myself and my partner to only initially send cheers to our centre position holomem until we looked up a video to check another rule where the person’s explanation of the cheer phase made it clear a cheer can be set to any holomem on stage, front position or back position. 

    A very minor gripe that might not affect a majority of players, but I would prefer the wording to be something like:

    “Turn the top card of the cheer deck face up, and send it to any holomem on stage (front position or back position)”

    For a little bit of easier reading.

    However, I find myself already in love and simultaneously anticipating & dreading when the next couple of sets are localised, knowing full well I have yet another card game I am going to become obsessed with.

    Well, considering that the next in-universe Magic: the Gathering set isn’t until 2026 now, maybe that is not such a bad thing.

    The starter deck was well worth the money in both instances, and if my brief review has made you interested in playing it, I definitely recommend picking it up.

    Three pages and 1000+ words, oh yeah, I am thinking I might be back! Thank you for reading today’s card game edition of the Redundancy Review, please continue to stay cool and hydrated wherever you are along with not letting the world get you down too much.

    For more information on the Official Hololive Card Game, visit the website here: hololive OFFICIAL CARD GAME｜hololive production

  • Redundancy Review: Day 32, “Siesta”

    Redundancy Review: Day 32, “Siesta”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia’s Rambles)

    Good morning legends and planeswalkers, welcome to Day 32 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Is it past morning in the UK? Yes.

    Am I still going to say good morning in each review? Yes.

    It is another day of peak temperatures in the UK, with the current heatwave expected to start tailing off tomorrow leading into cooler temperatures and hopefully some rain. Even just heading out for around an hour this morning was near unbearable due to the humidity retaining heat in the air and making it hard to move around, with me needing to douse myself in cold water shortly after returning home.

    After playing some games and doing some card sorting as the sun rises to the highest point in the sky I suddenly remembered I needed to write today, but surprisingly I feel a lot better writing the review later in the day than in my normal morning slot – plus it gives me a good excuse to sit still and just focus on a task that does not require much physical movement.

    My new contracting role officially starts on Monday, with me feeling… cautiously optimistic about it. One of the things that I am going to try do with this role is not taking things too personally when stressful situations are ongoing like I did with my last role, I am a contractor here to help but ultimately unless the position becomes permanent I do not want to feel much of a personal attachment to the work.

    That is something I do need to consider when it comes to looking for a full time role outside of the pipe dream of getting to do writing as my job every day, the desire to have passion for what I am working on. Whilst I can detach myself emotionally to some degree, I want to feel excited about what I am working on or what I am learning about, feeling enthusiasm for the skills I can develop.

    Regardless, not going to sneeze at an opportunity to build a safety runway further, especially as, outside of my convention trip in September, I have very few major birthdays and events coming up that I need to plan for/spend for, which means I can build a very good buffer of savings before Christmas hits and hopefully I can take a few unpaid days off as winter hits, ideally relaxing on my birthday.

    If you want to help me enable doing this day to day, consider hiring me/helping me out. Aside from when friends and family pay for meals, I fund every review topic myself, so commissioning some work or getting in touch to help provide funds for review topics would always help.

    And because my brain is actually functioning enough to write today, I do have a review topic!

    As part of my trip out today and as a portion of the greater organisation work I have been doing around my flat, I needed to get a new card binder. Sorting through almost eight years worth of Magic: the Gathering rares, mythics, and foils has led to my multicoloured binder specifically exceeding its capacity. Thankfully there is a very solid independent collectibles store in the main shopping centre in town who were more than happy to help me out.

    So rather than buying a standard binder/card album, what caught my eye today was a pack of Gamegenic 18-pocket ring binder pages, with the box stating that its contents could hold 900 cards total, being more than enough for what I currently need whilst also giving me a fair bit of future-proofing.

    The pages feel high quality, and with them being sideloaded instead of toploaded it means the cards are more secure to being shaken around. One of my main worries when I was buying the pages was that it would not fit the binder I had picked out to go alongside it, but upon closer inspection the pages have a wide variety of holes along their margin, making it almost impossible to find incompatibility.

    Gamegenic are newer on the scene compared to card storage & protection giants such as UltraPro, Ultimate Guard, and Dragon Shield, but each time I end up buying a Gamegenic product I find myself pleasantly surprised at the quality of it. 

    That said, the actual ring binder I got today is an UltraPro product, and as this shop specialises more in Pokemon cards than in any other product, my options were limited to Pokemon-themed ones, but that is no issue.

    I managed to get a pretty neat one anyway.

    Thank you for reading the Redundancy Review today, please keep yourself hydrated in this warm weather and do not exert yourself too much when it comes to physical activity.

    For more information on Gamegenic products, visit their website here: Home – Gamegenic

  • Redundancy Review: Day 13, “Document Everything”

    Redundancy Review: Day 13, “Document Everything”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: https://rosaliarambles.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/redundancy-review-day-1-a-new-beginning/)

    Good morning crumpets and teacakes, welcome to Day 13 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Main activity on the agenda today is a meeting with the Jobcentre to discuss the change in my circumstances, along with highlighting an error with how the administration company handled the payroll situation which has actively caused me to lose out on getting some money.

    Thankfully though, I have always been the kind of person to maintain an extremely robust source of documentation in any situation. Back when I was dealing with problems with the electricity company, and getting ready for a complaint to either them or the ombudsman, I went to Citizen’s Advice to get some guidance.

    The advisor said I had basically done their job for them, as they would be helping with gathering documentation and evidence. I walked in with a full month-long timeline of everything that had been happening, so all they really needed to do was give me the go ahead on what I was planning to do anyway.

    In a way as well, this series continues my habit. Every day I am creating something new that chronicles my journey through this next phase of my life, so there will always be a record of what I got up to, how I felt, and how the story unfolded.

    Beyond sorting out the situation with the Jobcentre and checking out job postings across the internet, it is mostly going to be having a day of connection with my partner. Over the weekend it was hard to do stuff together due to the heat getting to us and him experiencing PC issues, but with both of those things resolved now using his day off to spend time together seems like a good idea.

    I am still on the lookout for writing work though. The rhythm is now in full swing and each day makes me better at what I do. Food, games, music, all of them are in my repertoire fully now and I would love the opportunity to do paid work to explore my opinions on things.

    Today’s review will be a topic I considered briefly before ranting about Borderlands a few days back. One of my favourite Magic: the Gathering (MTG/Magic for short) cards, and how the deck around it took shape.

    Now, I know Magic is a very complicated card game. Being over thirty years old at this point in time and having a foundation of spaghetti code, it can be hard for outsiders to understand things – this is why I am going to write a short glossary on the terms to be discussed to hopefully minimise communication issues:

    • Colour – Magic has a system of five colours that determine what cards can do, similar to types in Pokemon. Colours do have a “philosophy” associated with them but that is a topic for another time
    • Commander – A format in Magic where you build a deck around a legendary creature (Commander), where all the cards need to stay in that colour identity, and you can only have one copy of each card
    • Spell – every nonland card in Magic is a spell, even creatures. The flavour of this is the players are dueling wizards, bringing forth powerful effectives each turn
    • Stack – similar to in programming, abilities in Magic work on a stack, operating on a “first in, last out” principle meaning whatever card is placed on the stack first resolves last

    Okay, preamble done, time to introduce the card.

    Momir Vig, Simic Visionary is a blue-green card initially released in the 2006 set “Dissension”, part of the original Ravnica block, with the version above being released in the 2019 “Ravnica Allegiance” Guild Kit decks, which is where I got my hands on it.

    The ability triggers whenever a creature spell of the respective colour is cast. Green lets you grab a creature and put it on top of your deck, blue lets you reveal the top card of your deck – if it’s a creature, you can put it into your hand.

    Hopefully the combo is pretty obvious here: play a green creature to get a card on top, and then follow up with a blue creature to get it into your hand. 

    However, there is a little something in Momir’s rules clarification that makes this card very interesting.

    If you play a creature that is both blue and green simultaneously, both abilities trigger. Due to how the stack works in Magic, the player triggering those abilities can choose to order them on the stack however they want. This means whenever a blue-green creature is cast, the player can essentially search their deck for any creature and put it into their hand.

    And if that creature is blue-green itself, then the process can continue ad nauseam… so obviously I built a deck around that entire concept.

    https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6941266#paper

    Behold! Simic Slaw, named for the horrendous concoction made up for a LoadingReadyRun Friday Nights episode. It is a deck solely made up of blue-green creatures, but I went beyond that. Even though cards of other types have no synergy with Momir, every card (minus artifacts) is blue-green as well.

    Now, is this deck extremely fun? Yes. Is this deck very tiresome to run because of all the shuffling? Yes. Does this deck have a clear win condition? You bet your ass it… does not actually.

    Simic Slaw is one of my several meme decks built around a silly theme to have fun rather than anything else. I have decks I can bring out for being competitive or being scary at a gaming table, but the joy of Commander is making weird creations of cards that would have never got their time to shine otherwise- a gallery of cards from a specific colour pair definitely fits that vibe.

    Anyway, that was a page and a bit ramble around Magic, so I will end things off here.

    Thank you for reading the Redundancy Review today. Hopefully the Monday blues do not hit you too hard and you are able to relax at some point today. You are appreciated by both me and the world, so hang in there.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 11, “Hot two? Damn”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: https://rosaliarambles.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/redundancy-review-day-1-a-new-beginning/) 

    Good morning risers and shiners, welcome to Day 11 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It is currently a wondrous 23 degrees Celsius outside at 9:15am (73 degrees in Freedom units) with the humidity at 59%. Combine this with the clay oven construction of the flat I live in and we get a formula for it once again being too damn hot. Thankfully the temperature is supposed to go back down to reasonable levels with 20 degrees being the peak instead of the lower part of the curve.

    Outside of the supply run I did with my partner yesterday, my productivity was minimised despite my best efforts to try to keep doing tasks – after a while of just moving small distances across the living room I turned into a sweaty mess that needed to sit down.

    Hopefully once things cool down and the flat returns to a reasonable temperature I can keep on my domestic quest to finish all the outstanding housework and tidying.

    Caught up with a friend and colleague of mine yesterday who mentioned that Poncle had closed applications for the QA engineer role, so hopefully I get to hear back soon enough (also cause I sent him the link to this site, if you are reading, hi!).

    Due to meet with the Jobcentre on Monday as well, hopefully I can get things sorted out with them and start receiving some extra money to help out with things.

    If you would like to help me out with my money situation, then I am available to be hired for writing work. Reviewing video games, card games, and board games are options alongside commissioning me for fiction – I love expanding my horizons and I would love working with you on your next project.

    So as part of my housework list yesterday, I resumed sorting my Magic: the Gathering cards. For those unaware, I own… a lot of cards…

    …possibly even too many one might say… this is not even a full representation of the entire collection, considering the amount of binders and commander decks I own.

    Though with consideration to today’s review subject, pictured above, keeping the collection organised has become easier.

    Those cardboard boxes are called BulkBox QUADs, being able to hold 3600 cards across four channels. They do require some assembly before use, and I will admit to minorly fucking up the construction on one of them but that is not a fault of the video tutorial I followed – created by Bulkbox themselves.

    Before purchasing this product, my cards were stored in a Fenrir Games 5000 count longbox that I had owned since around 2019. It definitely served its purpose for the time I had it but in my current living situation, it was difficult to use it without struggling to find a home for it.

    That is where one of the features of the BulkBox really appealed to me – a set of three QUADs fit perfectly into one IKEA Kallax cube. Having a massive amount of Kallax cube space already in my flat made it the ideal upgrade for my card storage solution.

    Picture taken from BulkBox’s website

    Even with the amount of cards currently spread across all three of the boxes I bought, I do not feel them bowing or bending whenever I pick them up – something I often encountered when needing to move my old 5000 count longbox. Even considering the somewhat botched job I did on construction, the Bulkbox holds up fantastically to the amount of cards I am putting into it.

    That said, I would consider Bulkbox to be premium-priced storage solutions. For a bundle pack of three QUADS (with free UK shipping) cost me £35. I do consider it worth it for serious collectors of cards and Kallax enthusiasts (that Venn diagram is a circle), especially if you want to minimise the footprint your collection has.

    Taking into account the rest of the collection I need to sort, it is likely I will need to buy from BulkBox again, and I know I can be assured of their quality.

    I think that covers everything for today, I am going to go focus on staying cool with soft drinks, frappes, and ice cream. Thank you for reading today, please stay cool and treat yourself to anything that cools you down.

    For more information on BulkBox products, visit their website here: BulkBox the best trading card game storage boxes