Rosalia Rambles

Tag: commander

  • 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 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.